Da Blue Grot
by ZeroInfinite
Summary: this is a story copied and pasted here to share, the original author is anonomus so i just wanted to show everyone this. I TAKE NO CREDIT! sum: a tau settlement is under attack by the ork warband the scraplootas, but the head mek boy finds an odd small blue grot only to discover she is a orphaned earth caste tau. as far as i know its raiting is due to language, but may change ratin
1. Chapter 1

i was upset that this awesome series of stories were nowhere on this site.

this is a story about an earth caste tau child being left behind durring an ork attack. and is adopted by the orks.

again i take no credit for this or even the characters, i litterally copy and pasted this from pastebin.

i would give credit to the author but its listed as anonomus so, either way i did not write this, just want to share this awesome story

Warboss Urtylug looked out of the viewscreen of his spire perch in the fort that lie atop the titan Boris, pleased with himself. It was going to be a good day, he could feel it. Already, his Scraplootas were making quick work of the Tau colony below him. With all of their anti air gun emplacements taken out ahead of time by Rockeata and his kommandos, there was little the Tau could do to stand against an Imperator-class Titan, warped by the taint of Chaos and then modified further by orks, droping right in the middle of them. After all, what kind of madman would dare airdrop a titan? Urtylug smiled smugly as he took another long draught of coffee. Just like when he got that drop on that Commissar, or those dark eldar, he began to feel warm and orky on the inside, especially thinking about those eldar. That was the very first time he deployed Boris and it had been a memorable one. Wanting revenge and to prove himself as warboss, the Scraploota's target had been the very same Wych Cult that had killed Urtylug's old warboss, Waarakton, before Urtylug had the chance to do it himself. The only sour note in that entire memory was the fact that he had to use that strange Farseer Vaedrisa's help with masking their presence, but it had all been worth it when he heard the screams of shock and horror from the very same eldar who had once forced him to ran away like a coward as Urtylug's titan tore through their ranks.

And now today, months later he had done the same to the Tau, thankfully without a single bit of help from the Farseer this time. He was finally going to finish his Boss gear with a proper cloak for his back. They had picked the biggest city on the entire planet, so there was no way the Tau's Ethereal could be anywhere else. Urtylug was going to kill him and take his robes, the perfect complement to his Commisar's cap and spiky shoulder duds made of pieces of Dark Eldar armor. He swiveled his tower around and inspected the carnage. Stikkmeat and his stormboyz were sowing havoc and destruction across all levels of the city, the kommandos were still doing their part and sabotaging any attempts the Tau made at regrouping and arranging a suitable counterattack, there were a steady stream of Tinka's mekboys traveling in and out of Boris' feet delivering scrap metal to repair and modify the titan even as they fought, and the swashkrumpa nobs Urtylug had trained himself were swinging about the outside of the titan and engaging any tau warrior who tried to board the great behemoth. Perhaps most significant was the branch of Urtylug's army that required the least bit of his attention and that he seemed to forget existed from time to time: his disproportionate number of grots. Making up the backbone of his military, grots of all type were swarming about every which way, adding to the havoc and cutting down any tau who tried to stand against them with sheer numbers like an angry green wave of guns, blades, and teeth. The only issue that needed Urtylug's attention was a sizeable force of tau fire warriors trying to escort a Hammerhead tank to the backside of Boris, trying to find a weakpoint in the gargantuan warmachine. They had pulled together a tight formation, quickly and efficiently cutting down any grot that crossed their path and providing enough covering fire to keep stormboys and kommandos alike at bay. With a press of a button, Urtylug had informed and deployed Rakkatrakk and his warbikers that made up Boris' Rear Guard onto the scene. With many of them crashing their bikes or every outright exploding as soon as they made contanct with the ground, Rakkatrakk's boys sped forward and cut their way through the ranks of Firewarriors, taking advantage of the complete confusion caused by backend end of a titan opening up and spitting out warbikers. Soon enough, the entire escort was overrun by warbikers, stormboys, and grots to put up a fight and fell to the horde, what was left of their precious Hammerhead already in the process of being looted by the multitudinous grots. Yes, it was most certainly a good day to be a Scraploota.

Big Mek Tinka Zizzbitz was currently takin advantage of the carnage surrounding him to look for the nicest scraps to work with. He rooted through the wreckage of gravtanks and battlesuits looking for the pieces that buzzed or sparked with electricity. Much like his warboss, Tinka was also in a great mood. Now that he had access to all the fancy Tau bits, there was no way his Zizzbitz's Patented Zizzomatic Chainkutlass would remain uncompleted. He had already begun the process of melting down and reforging that orange tau metal he had found, figuring that if he used Tau bits on tau metal there would be less of a problem getting the thing to work. The only obstacle he had run into thus far had been that his cybernetic eye had been damaged by a grenade detonating a little too close to him, making the search for the best electric bits much more difficult. Fortunately for Tinka, there were always plenty of grots around for him to bully into servitude for him. Unfortunately for Tinka, most of these grots tried to take advantage of the mayhem to run away and avoid him under the pretense of fighting and his peg leg made it hard for him to keep up. All the same, the box of sparking scraps of advanced tau technology he had assembled filled him with promise. The Zizzomatic Chainkutlass would be assembled today, he just knew it. Now if only he could find where his latest batch of gretchin assistants had run off to…

Nearby, a lone tau Earth Caste child shivered in the ruins of her old orphanage, frightened by the battle surrounding her. The rest of the children had already been evacuated as quickly as possible upon the arrival of the orks and their monstrous contraption of death, for the future generation must be preserved for the Greater Good. This particular orphan, however, had born the brunt of hatred from the entire orphanage. Rumored to be the offspring of two separate castes, she was seen as the product of selfishness and an anathema towards the Greater Good and as such, was treated with nothing but scorn. There may have been some truth to the rumors of her mixed heritage, given the number of fights she refused to back down from. Fights that her fighting back in only caused her more harm rather than less and spurred on her aggressors. Fights the elders rarely broke up unless the vicious gang of Fire Caste children looked like they were going to do any permanent damage to the outcasted tau girl. Usually, at least. Not even the other Earth Caste children, few as they were, would have anything to do with the disgusting hybrid, lest they too have to suffer the wrath of the Fire Caste, larger in both physique and numbers. It was because of this that it came as no surprise to her that someone had barricaded the door to her room when the alarms sounded. By the time she had managed to break her way out of her room, they were already long gone and much of the orphanage had collapsed around her, trapping her within. The frightened would-be engineer wondered if the elders had even bothered to check for her before they escaped as she huddled in a corner and tried to remain as small as possible.

Through a few holes and cracks in the walls and ceiling she could see what was going on around her. Orks as far as she could see were tearing her home apart and slaughtering her colony. They even had some sort of massive battlesuit out there, crushing entire homes underfoot. She didn't look for very long, though, lest the orks discover her hiding spot. Instead, she had busied herself with fixing up a damaged gun drone that had fallen through a hole in the roof using her trusty spanner, a memento left behind by the mother she never knew. It wobbled silently and shakily in the air next to her, patiently ready to defend her. The sound of an explosion and voices awoke the little tau girl from her reverie with a start.

"We could have used that stikk bomb, Zaggit" one of the voices sneered

"What for's? We's hiding, remember?" another snipped back

"Both of you's shut da zog up you gits! Do you want tha Big Mek ta find us?!" yet a third voice grumbled

The Earth Caste girl chanced a peek around the corner. And saw roughly two dozen of the smaller breed or ork, 'gretchins' she believed they were called, arguing amongst themselves and rummaging through the main room, looking for something of value to take or somewhere to hide and arguing amongst themselves.

"All's I'm sayings is that a bomb is always useful. It didn'ts need to be wasted like dat."

"It WAS useful, you git! We used it just fine!"

"We's could 'ave climbed through the holes and hid just as fine. Better even"

"And then da Big Mek woulda caught us and we'z would be working right now! Is dat what you want?"

"He's will be noticing the hole we left. Didja thing about DAT one, Gazzd?"

"We'z in the middle o' a warzone, Zaggit, does you really think da Big Mek is goings to notice one measly…" the gretchin trailed off, looking in the direction the tau girl was spying from. She whirled her head back behind the wall with a gasp. "Get's your weapons, boys, we's has componee wiff us…"

The enterprising young tau ordered her first and last line of defense into action. The half-functioning gun drone zipped out from behind the wall she was hiding behind, shooting with as much abandon as its ork targets. The tau girl could only watch in horror as her automated defender made its last stand, valiantly shrugging off incoming bullets until finally one of the green skinned beasts leapt atop it and stabbed it until it stopped moving. There were only five of them now, all about the same size as her or larger, all advancing on her slowly as she backed away. Her hands clenched as she stopped backing away, making the gretchins also stop for a brief moment in confusion. A fire had begun to build up inside of her, the same fire that built up whenever a Fire Caste kicked her down or ganged up on her. None of the surviving gretchins seemed to have guns, only knives or their bare hands. Outnumbered and outmatched, this was a situation she was used too, a scenario she had undergone on all too regular of a basis. Something primitive in the back of her mind was pushing its way to the fore. Some animal instinct that demanded her survival, that set her mind ablaze in fury. The grots bounded forward at her as she gripped her spanner tightly…

The tiny tau girl worked frantically, bloodied spanner twisting and turning with the gutted casing of the gun drone. Gretchin bodies surrounded her, some riddled with bullets, others bludgeoned into various states of unrecognizable paste as desperate tears streamed silently down her face. Besides a few cuts and bruises and one particularly nasty gash along her arm that she had bandanged to the best of her ability, the improvised mechanic was intact and alive. The same could not be said for her mechanical savior, though. It had taken far too much damage, unlike the last time she fized it where all it needed was a few refastenings and some spliced wires. Ignoring the stab wounds to its casing, the insides were a mess. The batteries were fried, the wires to the firing mechanisms were frayed to uselessness and the central neural hub needed to be replaced entirely. In her trance, she barely even noticed the giant one legged ork holding a box under one of his arms that was approaching her until he called out.

"So DAT'S where you gits has been 'idin." He boomed in a voice that seemed halfway between anger and mirth "I oughta krump da lotta you'z fer sleepin' on da job like dis. Now wake up ya lazy gits!"

Perplexed and angered by the lack of response he picked up the nearest gretchin corpse and started shaking it.

"I SAID WAKE UP YA LAZY GITS! I'Z GONNA RIP YER SKULL OUT AN BEAT YA TA DEFF WITH IT IF YA DON'T…now wait one zoggin minnit…" he brought the corpse closer to his bionic eye "All dese gits are dead. What gives?" The large ork began to scan the room, looking for an answer to this mystery

The Earth Caste remained absolutely still, hoping that in the darkness of the ruins he wouldn't be able to see her due to his apparently bad eyesight and felt her stomach drop as the massive beast proved her wrong, hobbling up to her.

"You dere. Why didn't ya answer when I called ya lousy grot?!" he demanded of her, but she was too frozen with fear to answer.

"I said ta answer me, grot! Did ya kill all dese other gits?" She nodded weakly

"By yerself?" She nodded again.

"Good! Serves em right fer runnin off like dat! Zoggin good work of ya ta do it all be yerself…oiy, wuts dat ya got dere?" he grabbed the drone up from her lap and brought it close to his face, obscuring. "Oiy, right sparky, dis one is. Dese bits'll work great. Dey's in good condition, too. I'z be havin' one lucky day alright."

In one last desperate bid for survival, the tau girl rushed forward and began to attack one of the ork's legs. Lost in thought, the great green brute barely registered her tiny little fists beating frantically against his leg until he looked down and saw her there, tears streaming and fists pounding away madly.

"Oiy you git!" he said, annoyed, as he gave her a swift kick that sent her sprawling to the floor, "I outta krump you good fer dat one, but it looks like it's your lucky day too, ya lazy grot. I'z be needin an assistant."

He gave the shivering tau child another scrutinizing once over before putting down the box he was holding and replacing it with her. Much like the gretchin corpse and the drone before her, he brought her up close to his face for inspection.

"You'z blue." he stated incredulously "A blue grot. Mighty weird lookin one at dat. It really is my lucky day!" he laughed, before shoving the box in her hands and barking at her "Now take dis box an' get walkin back ta camp! I'z wanna finish my projekt afore da Boss tells us ta ship out!"

The crude box he shoved into her arms full of components from various tau devices brutishly ripped from their previous homes as he carried the half gutted drone she had been trying to fix with him. It was also incredibly heavy for the little girl, but she couldn't slow down for if she did, he'd give her another light kick in the backside and tell to get moving. She walked stone faced as he paraded her through the ravaged streets that had once been her home. Having run out of tears to cry and having sunk so deep into despair that despair could no longer reach her, she had begun formulating a plan. If only she could get her hands back on that drone, she could fix it back up and sic it on them. It wouldn't last long, but it could distract them for as long as she needed to escape, no doubt the wilds were a safer habitat than an ork infested city. From there, she could head to the nearest city and warn them of the monstrosities she now faced. Maybe there, she could start her life free of the prejudice that had followed her throughout this city and just be a regular Earth Caste. She just had to bide her time…

Tinka's day just kept getting better and better. Now, not only did he have all the raw materials needed to finish his work, but he found a grot that actually listened and didn't run off. Sure, it was a little scrawny and kept slowing down, nor did it seem to even know which way camp was, but it was blue, which meant it was dead lucky, so that had to count for something. Soon enough he had made his way back to camp, grot in tow. His workshop was on the edge of camp, so he didn't have to muck about with other orks before he could get to work in his private backroom, free from the pestering of his mekboys in the larger garage area. It was time to finish the Zizzomatic Chainkutlass, his ultimate goal in life. Usually, fixing up warbikes, and assembling more rokkit paks always stood in the way of his side project, but now he could shuffle off enough of the work to his mekboys and this grot he found to finally finish the chainkutlass that coursed with electricity he dreamed of. Sure, most of his boys were busy working on fixing up Boris at the moment and it was only one grot, but he'd worked bigger miracles before. He took the box back from the grot and sat down at his desk, crude schematics of curved chainswords from different angles surrounding him, as well as various chainsword components tinted orange. Setting the box of tau bits down in front him, he decided it was time to set that grot to work.

"First off, work on this" he said, plucking out his bionic eye and tossing it to her "been giving me a zoggin 'eadache all day."

Tinka had just barely begun to try and read his notes with his one good eye when he heard a tiny voice whisper "I-I'm done, s-sir"

"Wuzzat?"

"I-I said I'm done." the voice stammered a little louder. Tinka looked over at his grot to see it holding his eye in both of its hands, offering it to him.

"Gork AND Mork, you're fast." He muttered, snatching the eye from his new assistant and reattaching it to his skull. He blinked a few times, readjusting to his new vision "Zoggin good, too"

It was the clearest his mek eye had ever been. He could see things with a definition he didn't think possible, way different than that blurry mess he was putting up with not but a few moments ago. He began putting the grot to work on other tasks he didn't want to do, tasks it finished in record speeds. He looked at his grot again with his new eye, noticing how strange it looked. Aside from being blue, there was no nose to speak of and its knees bent at a funny angle, ending in hooves. It was almost like this wasn't a grot at all and instead one of those…No matter, it worked hard and gave him a nice new eye, something that had been bothering him for a while now and he expected to take hours to fix. Whatever this grot was, it was certainly lucky and worked hard, which is all he really needed out of a grot anyways. He rooted around his assorted bits and scraps to use on the chainkutlass, looking for that one piece that he needed, that one that he could've sworn was there just a second ago. Unsatisfied with his current selection, he decided to dig through the other piles of scrap around camp.

Much like his Big Mek and trusty first mate, Warboss Urtylug's day had only gotten better and better. Though the tau's ethereal had evaded his wrath, he had found its living quarters, stocked full of various robes for him to try on. It was deep gray in color with yellow trim and yellow runic symbols, matching both his tribal colors and his gray commissar cap. Spiggot had even been smart enough to know when to switch over from tea to coffee today, so he didn't have to smack him about. Right now, he was wandering the small camp that had been thrown together, mostly for repairs to vehicles and weaponry, as the final preparations for loading Boris back into the Loot-hava were being made. He ran across Tinka, limping happily with a box full of sparking scrap metal, as was customary for Big Mek Zizzbitz. He decided to hail his old warbuddy over, not much else better to day.

"Oiy Tinka, you look awful giddy. Didja finally get dat kutlass of yers ta work? "

"Oh hey, Boss!" Tinka called back, not stopping his trek "Not yet, but I'z about to. Got me da luckiest grot in all da worlds! Ded fast worker, too! Fixed me eye right up!"

"Lucky grot, huh? Wut makes 'im so lucky?"

"Dat's da thing! 'E's blue all over!" Tinka exclaimed proudly.

"A blue grot?"

"I know, I thought da same thing, but it'z small like a grot an it works like a grot, so I figger it must be grot. Eitha way, it don't run off an works ded 'ard so I can finish my Zizzbitz's Patented Zizzomatic Chainkutlass."

"A blue grot dat works hard? Now this I'z gotta see!"

Their plans were interrupted, however, by a large gathering of orks outside of Tinka's private quarters and an even larger gathering outside the workshop to see what the ruckus was about. Tinka's mekboys were guarding the door to his chambers, knowing they'd be punished severely if they let anyone intrude on their boss's inner sanctum. Meanwhile, an ork wearing a tattered robe of an Imperium psyker that he had found aboard the titan wielding a large grimy book (also from the titan) in one hand and a crude staff fashioned from a stick and a glowing green squig lashed to the end in the other and an ork kommando tried to gain entry.

"It sez right here that an ork must never suffer da unorky!" Fizzgutz da Klerik proclaimed opening his book and shoving it in the mekboy's face without even reading it, his similarly robed weirdgrot attendants exchanging nervous glances at being surrounded by so many orks.

"I'z don't care what dat book says, da Big Mek sez no visitors, an dat means no visitors, not even Gork 'imself!" The mekboy shouted back standing his ground.

"We'z ain't visitors, ya git! We'z knights, chosen personally by Gork to keep Scraplootas orky! An' I know wut I saw! It wuz wunna dem tau boys!" Derknitt, Fizzgutz's kommando devotee explained, trying to get past the mekboy again.

Tinka then waded into the fray, seeing his prized grot in danger "Oiy! What you'z doin sneakin around my shop anyways, you git! I'll krump ya good fer dat one! 'Sides, dat's no tau, dat's a grot! An' dat grot is plenty orky"

"It's a tau you git! Whoeva heard of a blue grot?!" Fizzgutz declard

"Whoeva heard of an ork becoming a weirdboy!" Tinka countered

Before the situation could escalate, Urtylug shouted at the top of his lungs "Enough! I'z da boss, so I'z says what's orky an' what's not! Now show me dis grot o' yers already."

Reluctantly, Tinka opened the door to his private chambers and out tumbled a little tau girl, falling flat on her arse, having been previously leaning against the door and listening to the argument outside. Her eyes widened in terror as she shuffled her cloven feet in order to scoot backwards back into Tinka's room and looking for a place to hide.

"See! I told ya! Dats a tau! I krumped enough of em today to know!" Derknitt accused, satisfied.

"Nonsense! It was a grot ya git! It's just a funny lookin grot! It's not like da Scraplootas don't put up with funny lookin nonsense all da zoggin time!" Tinka opposed while motioning at the glowing squig, suddenly a lot less sure of himself.

"A blue grot ain't much orkier ya git!"

"Sure it is ya git! It's a lucky grot, just you see it in action! I'll krump ya if ya lay a hand on it!"

"Krumpin da Prophet of Gork 'imself?! Da Codorks Gorkstartes does not support dis action!"

"Zog you, zog Gork, an' zog dat zoggin book, too!"

"Shaddap all o you'z!" Urtylug interjected once again. He wondered briefly if other bosses had to put up with this kind of mess or if it was a situation unique to the Scraplootas. "I'z already said I'z da boss so I'z get ta decide what's orky! Now I want a closer look at dis grot!"

Tinka and Urtylug proceeded into his chamber, where the tau girl was busying herself rummaging in some boxes, frantically muttering to herself. She turned around with a start and froze with fear, exposed to all.

"Tinka…dat's a tau. Dere's no doubt about it." Urtylug sighed.

"No…No…It'z a grot, see? It fixed me eye, it made warbikes faster than zog all…" Tinka tried to defend 'imself.

"No one's blaming you, you'z sed it yourself dat your eye was bad." Urtylug tried to placate his old friend. He didn't want to have to krump his first mate over a tau

"Dat doesn't matter, zog it! It's a grot! It's my lucky grot an' works ten times 'arder den any of dese gits! I ain't gonna give it up just cause it's a tau!" Tinka swelled up with anger, looking ready to fight.

A curious sound coming from where the tau girl was sitting stopped both of them in their tracks. It was the rumbling growl of a revved chainsword mingled with the faint hum and crackle of electricity. There, at the Big Meks feet, was an orange chainkutlass that coursed with life. He switched it off and inspected it. The teeth of the sword were made of some sort of transparent metal, tinted the same color as the rest of the blade. Attached to the base of the blade was some sort of generator that had been worked right into the handguard, making it barely noticeable.

"Da Zizzomatic…" Tinka uttered in awe

"I-I finished it for you, s-sir" the little tau managed to whisper.

Tinka turned on the chainkutlass and barged his way past the gathering of orks, all eyes now on him, and stabbed a nearby gretchin that was unfortunate enough to be within stabbing distance. The blade dug hungrily into the grot as it spasmed painfully from electrical shock until finally its head exploded. Tinka laughed with gleeful abandon that Urtylug hadn't heard since Tinka found the Dark Eldar who took his leg and beat him to death with his own freshly torn off leg.

"Dere!" Tinka shouted triumphantly "Dat should settle it! Only somefing ded orky could build something like Zizzbitz's Patented Zizzomatic Chainkutlass! Dat blue grot is de dorky, even if it is a tau!" Urtylug couldn't help but agree with his logic. He was about to voice his decision when Derknitt, sensing he was losing favor with the crowd shout "We should let Gork decide!", much to the approval of nearby orks.

"Wuzzat? Oh! Yes! We must let Gork choose its fate, as per the ritual described in da Gorkamorkacon" Fizzgutz concurred, shaking himself out of his awe inspired trance and pointing to his book without once looking down at it. Fizzgutz had never been the same ever since that titan turned him into a weirdboy for sleeping in it too often. Now he preached nonstop about how he was the "Leff Hand o' Gork" and constantly kept a herd of grots around him for whatever reason. Still, he was the closest thing to a runt herder Urtylug had and he was a zogging good weirdboy, so he usually let these things slide. Urtylug made a mental note to keep an eye on those two and to make sure Fizzgutz included Urtylug in his next sermon. Gork's will was just as important to him as it was any other ork, but he had to make sure that his boys were loyal to him above all else. He also made another mental note to remember the first one. He then made yet another mental note to brush up on his reading so he'd know what all these mental notes said. He left a note to remember that note, too. Tinka's blue grot had been pushed to the center of a large circle of orks, Fizzgutz standing on the opposing side. And with that, the blue grot's trial began.

"We gatha here today to judge dis foul creatcha, using the purest of Gork's cree-ayshuns, dat which keeps da mighty Boris proppa orky!" Fizzgutz shouted with much ado, making a scene and gesturing to the docile glowing squig atop his staff. He pointed it at the tau and hollered "FEEL GORKS GAZE UPON YOU!"

For a while nothing happened as the tau stood there, as confused as she was afraid and the glowing squig that had been shoved in her face, now upside down, stared off in the distance, unfazed by the ceremony. Finally, it seemed to take notice of the tau girl only inches away from it, snorted once, and then drew a long green tongue across the tau's face in a single lick. Fizzgutz dropped to his knees in shock, dropping his staff. Urtylug tensed. While he had no problem striking down those who dared defy his will, he still felt nervous about killing the chosen prophet of Gork.

"GORK HAS SPOKEN" the Klerik finally proclaimed "DIS BLUE GROT IS RIGHT PROPPA ORKY!"

With that, a cheer rose up amongst the orks and Tinka rushed over to secure his prize, grabbing up the tau girl and looking about suspiciously, making sure no one else tried to have a go at her. Derknitt tried protest the results with Fizzgutz, only to be snubbed

"Gork works in mysterious ways. After all, he is da God of Brutal Kunning" Fizzgutz explained to the kommando and continued with pageantry "Clearly, he is tellin us dat we Scraplootas are his chosen tribe, destined to make da whole galaxy right proppa orky!" In response, Derknitt grumbled something about how "they always listen to the ones with the cloaks" and stomped off.

With that out of the way, Urtylug took a sip of tea and once more relished the feeling of his new cloak about his shoulders. Yes, today was a good day to be a Scraploota.

Blue sped through Boris' hallways as fast as her hooved feet would take her, diving and crawling through vertical shafts as often as she was running. It had been a few months since she joined up with the Scraplootas, though the exact length of time would've been hard for her to guess at. You lose track of silly things like time when you're an ork. All that matters is krumping gits and looting and she loved every second of it. Back when she was still a tau, she was told that she deserved to be hit and called names and that she should just sit and take it. But now that she was an ork, she was allowed to call gits names back and hit as many lousy grots as possible. She had just finished sneaking past the boss and sneaking into his bosstower on top of Boris in order to talk to the giant ork himself and now she had something important to do. She leapt from an access corridor into one of the many marketplaces in Boris' legs, nicking some fungus beer from an inattentive grot as she did and downing it in one gulp. She spilled out of the exit located in the feet and ducked between Rakkatrakks warbike races, making a note to come back and help them repair their warbikes and move the bodies once she finished her current chore. Finally, she reached her destination: Tinka's Mek Shop set up in the corner of Boris' Room. Once inside, she grabbed a few buckets of paint as she headed towards a room in the back labeled "Blue's Korner", minding to watch for all the tau gubbins the mekboys had dumped outside her door, seeing as she was the only one who seemed to be able to get them to work. She ducked inside and saw what she was looking for: a squig wearing goggles and sleeping in a bed next to a heavily modified gun drone. Above the squig's head was a small sign with the words "Shas'O Squig" written on it. Blue knelt down and scratched the squig at the little nubs where his jaw ended, waking him up and causing him to roll over in delight

"Hey, Shas'O" the little tau said, taking off her spiked helmet "First off, I just wanna thank ya for being there for me, ya lousy git."

The squig rolled over onto it's feet and gave her face a lick, leaping into her arms

"And next, I wanna say how I is sorry" The squig looked at her, puzzled

"You's an ork, and I's been calling you Shas'O all this time. Back when I was a tau, that was tha name we gave our big heroes, kinda like how they call the Boss Titanloota" She explained. "And you was there for me back when I was a scared little git, so you was kinda like a hero to me…"

"Y'see, I's been talkin to Boris today, askin him about what he was before was a titan, and you know he told me? He told me ta quit muckin about, 'cause he's always been a titan, he just didn't always know it." She opened up a bucket of paint and began to paint over the word "Shas'O" as continued. "And then it occurred to me. I's always been an ork, I just never realized it. Looting, screaming, making more dakka, and krumping gits, it's what I'm good and it's I's love to do! So I'm gonna do what Boris said and quit all this Tau mockery right here. 'Cause I ain't a tau. I's an ork." She finished her painting.

"Whatta ya say to that, Mr. Squig?"

A rather peculiar ork, but an ork nonetheless, colored a shade of blue ran out of the Mek Shop, a squig riding an old tau gun drone in tow, her laughter echoing off the walls of the ship


	2. blue and the tau

again i take no credit.

again anonymous, if the original author sees this, please tell me and i will remove...this awesome story. or give you full credit.

anyway, last we left blue she was adapting to ork culture very well. now the tau want to attempt to rescue her.

"Status report, Shas'Vre."

"Assimilation of the gue'la on this world is going smoothly, Shas'El. We have only experienced minimal resistance from the warriors positioned amongst the civilians. We will start relocating them to reeducation camps by the end of the day, sir." Shas'Vre Pan'zah shuffled his hoofs subtly. Shas'El K'Lem P'rer pretended not to notice.

"Excellent, Shas'Vre. How much longer until we can integrate this planet into our sept?"

"Within the month, Shas'El. If nothing goes awry."

K'Lem P'rer turned smartly to face his body guard and personal aide, "If nothing goes awry? Are you expecting complications then?"

"Well, sir, interrogating compliant gue'la revealed that most of their warriors are off further west from our landing point, fighting off another invasion. Be'gel, sir."

The Shas'El exhaled sharply. Greenskins. The very thought of the putrid race set his teeth on edge, "What have our scouts reported?"

"It seems to be a tribe of Be'gel—"

"Only a single tribe? I was expecting at least two to a full Waaagh if they had to divert nearly all their troops to the warfront."

"Well, the first complication would be that they have a titan."

"What."

"You know, one of those large mobile fortresses used by those strange gue'la covered in spikes?"

"I know what a titan is, Pan'zah. I was expressing my incredulity at its presence."

Pan'zah shrugged, "There's no evidence to suggest that they're working in tandem with Chaos."

"Good, so there is still hope for this world." The Shas'El turned his attention to a datascreen with reports filling in from various Kau'ui, trying not to think about the implications. Orks with a titan... This was a scenario he recognized. But it couldn't be. That was years ago and on the opposite side of the sept. "You said 'first complication,' so there are more?"

"Yes, Shas'El. The titan has Tau technology crudely welded to it, sir."

"Scraplootas? We've landed on the same world as the damned Scraplootas?" It could be no other tribe. Shas'El K'Lem P'rer had been there. Fought against their insane masses. He was just a Shas'Ui then, but the thought of those ambushers and their titan yelling all sorts of nonsense still gave him shivers. It was a Tau colony world, not an outpost or a conquest. A single tribe had taken on an entire Uash'o and nearly won, if they didn't get bored and leave or something. You couldn't tell with Orks.

"Very well. I accept this challenge, we will prove the might of the Tau over these scoundrels yet."

"One last complication, Shas'El. Which I think you should see for yourself." Pan'zah uploaded new video to K'Lem P'rer's datascreen.

The screen was fuzzy, as if seen through electrobinoculars, but between all the thuggish beasts darted a lithe form, clearly grayish-blue, clearly Tau, possibly female.

"My god, they kept slaves? Look how poorly they treat her! Nothing to wear but scraps of metal and rags!"

"Sir, they all wear scraps of metal and rags."

K'Lem P'rer ignored this comment, "And she's so skinny! I won't stand for this, starving her and forcing her to work for these brutes!" He placed his fist in his upturned palm with resolve, "We will go and save her before we march on the Be'gel. All of their Tau slaves."

"She appears to be the only one, Shas'El."

"No doubt she could also provide vital intelligence about the weaknesses of this tribe. They aren't immortal."

"I said she was a complication and not an asset for a reason, Shas'El."

"And finally we will show that the power of the Tau'va triumphs over savages even in disparate conditions." Like a titan.

"She seems happy, Shas'El."

"What? Impossible. It must be some sort of mistake. Sto'khom syndrome or something."

"Yes, Shas'El."

"Assemble a La'rua of our stealthiest warriors. I want them in and out before the Be'gel notice."

"Yes, Shas'El."

"In fact, I want to personally commend them when they return from their mission. In fact, I want us to go out and accompany them so we can be the first ones to congratulate them on their return."

"Does that 'we' include me, Shas'El?"

K'Lem P'rer gave Pan'zah a look.

"...Yes, Shas'El."

Blue was on the outskirts of camp, happily tinkering with a trukk. She was trying to modify a railgun into some sort of extra temporary acceleration system. Mr. Squig circled around her while grunting contently to a tuneless beat, and then abruptly stopped.

Blue looked up from her work to see Mr. Squig looking around, sniffing, scanning the area with its shootas. Blue subtly reached for her shoota as well. She rolled under the carriage of the trukk as the stealthed fire warrior reached for her, missing grabbing her leg by an inch. Mr. Squig opened fire and so did she, but her light shoota did minimal damage to the stealth suit.

"What are you doing, Fio'La? We are here to rescue you!"

"We have no time. Take her before she can alert any guards." The trukk was lifted from over Blue, and in the twilight she could almost make out the outline of at least three of them. And they had shot down Mr. Squig. She opened fire again, bullets ricocheted off the inclosing Tau.

"BIG MEK, HELP! SNEAKY GITZ ARE TRYING TO STEAL—" She was zapped by some sort of stun gun and blacked out.

Blue vaguely remembered being carried away in the arms of a battlesuit as the sounds of her comrades firing upon the Tau echoed behind her. There was also something that sounded like Boris roaring. She even thought she heard Zizzbitz calling out her name.

Blue woke up in a bed. She jolted upright and looked down on herself. Her clothes and armor were gone, replaced by some sort of robe. She looked at her hands, eight fingers all accounted for, but clean. No grime, no dirt, no grease, no oil stains. Her spanner was on the stand by the bed, but in a similarly horrid state, nearly gleaming. What kind of madness was this? They even removed the claws she had nailed on her hooves, which were also cleaned and manicured. Never had she felt so uncomfortable with the condition of her body. What would Warboss Urtylug say? She looked like she'd been muckin' around all her life. Her hair even got a trim.

The small room she was in was mostly empty. Beside her stand and bed there was a comfortable looking chair and a deactivated datascreen. Besides the door, the only other possibility for escape was a vent that blew fresh air into the room. But it was so small, even a grot would have trouble squeezing into it.

As Blue contemplated fitting herself through the vent anyway, the door opened. She turned to see a stately looking Tau in full regalia standing in the doorway.

"The sensors in the room indicated you were awakened, Fio'La. I hope your rescue was not too traumatizing to you, but the Shas'Ui assured me you were too panicked to escape with them willingly. Even opening fire on them!" He gave a hearty laugh that Blue immediately disliked, "You are on an Orca class dropship and I am Shas'El K'Lem P'rer. What is your name?"

Blue carefully kept her distance as the Shas'El entered the room, "They call me Da Blue Grot, but I call myself Blue most times."

"Ah, those Be'gel took you so long ago that you've forgotten your own name? What a pity. I'm sure that with your diligence, you would have risen high in your caste." He gestured for Blue to sit in the comfortable looking chair as he looked toward the datascreen which started filling with tables and reports.

"What did you do with my clothes and armor?"

"We burned the rags you arrived in away as we cleansed your body. I assure you, it was necessary. They may have been diseased. Your tool was cleaned and returned to you though, as you can see."

Blue approached the comfortable chair. It reminded her of a squig with a back mutation. She tested it warily with a hand, her palm sinking a good four inches into the cushions. She sat down and was basically consumed. It felt like melting. Blue couldn't help but think the Warboss or Boris would enjoy this more. Boris especially because he had those... never mind.

"Comfortable?" K'Lem P'rer turned to smile at Blue, but immediately turned back. "Forgive me, Fio'La Blue, but your robes are in disarray."

"What's it to you, ya git?" Blue crossed her legs and arms anyway.

"Never mind. Now, we don't expect anything from you, saving you was for the Greater Good, but if you have any information about that tribe of Orks, the 'Scraplootas,'" he looked over his shoulder slightly, and then completely turned around to face her, "We would be very grateful."

"You expecting me to squeal on me mates or something?"

"Your mates? But those horrible greenskins were keeping you captive!" The Shas'El's eye twitched slightly as the face of his aide floated up mouthing "She seems happy" from the depths of his brain.

"I'm more captive now than I've been in years, ya git."

"That's not possible, our reconnaissance indicated that they were ordering you around! My goodness, how far have they broken you?

"They didn't break nothing. Big Mek and Warboss order everyone around anyway." She shrugged somewhat ineffectually, "I'm just another Ork."

"No, you are Tau. You are no Ork."

"I'm plenty Orky! I can feel the WAAAGH, ya git!"

"I am a Shas'El! Not a git!"

Blue tried to sit up in the chair but failed. It might have been a trap after all, "Oh, am I rumplin' yer shortz, ye dumb git?" K'Lem P'rer turned away quickly again, "Can't face me proppa neither, eh?"

"I suppose I will have to get Shas'Vre Pan'zah to assign you to a reeducation camp. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but you are further gone that I had assumed. You will not enjoy reeducation." This last sentence carried a certain menace that actually somewhat worried Blue.

The Shas'El strode quickly to the door, "If you decide to change your mind at some point before we land, perhaps we can work something out." It opened, blocked off by a barrel and a cardboard box.

"What's the meaning of this? Who put these here?" He looked around into the corridor as Blue escaped the confines of the chair finally and scrambled for her spanner.

The top of the barrel popped open, revealing the face of an Ork. "Oi, we found Da Blue Grot!"

"Greenskins? On board? But that's impossible!"

"Wuz damn 'ard gettin' aboard, dat's fer sure!" The barreled Kommando struggled to pull a gun out of his container as the boxed Kommando got up, facing the wrong way.

Before K'Lem P'rer could shout for alarm, he was hit on the back of the head with a spanner.

The Kommandos stood in front of Blue and saluted best they could. She may have been smaller and weaker than them, but it was always a good idea to treat a lucky charm nicely.

"Whut's you wearin'?"

"Dunno, but it ain't proppa. Can't move around in these." She squatted down and started tugging at the finery that the Shas'El was wearing. "Help me get these off this git."

"Should we krump 'im?"

Blue shook her head as she pulled the fancy dress pants on. "Would be too easy on a git who has only mucked about. No point in validating his life by having him die on a mission." The git didn't even have a weapon on him. "Let him wake up and know that he's failed."

There was a crunch and a shudder as the craft lurched to a halt, as if grabbed out of midair. Blue could hear the engines straining.

"Den we should tell Boris not ta stomp on dis craft, eh?"

Big Mek Tinka himself was in the dropship alongside a few other Kommandos. They were keeping the Tau at bay, and had basically barricaded off the hallway that Blue was in with metal sheets pulled from the walls and floors. She jumped up and tapped the Big Mek on the shoulder, "You came for me!"

"Of course, ya git. I woulda crossed the galaxy fer ya. 'Ow many good luck charms like you am I gonna find? Where'd you loot dose nobby clothing from?"

Blue was dressed in full Shas'El regalia, undeniably fancy even to an Ork. The clothes were a little tight around the hips and chest, "Looted it from some dumb git. Let's go." The two Kommados that found her were hauling the comfortable chair with them.

"Kay, when I give da word, Boris will krump dis dropship and take us 'ome."

Blue shook her head, "We'd be stompin' them while they was still weak. They only brought their sneaky gitz with them. Let them go, and they'll be back with many more gitz for a proppa Orky fight. And then we can krump them."

"Ya gonna 'ave ta explain dat t'da Warboss."

"And I'm sure he'll want a proppa fight since these humies we've encountered are mostly weak and small and not fun to stomp."

"Fine," he turned to the Kommandos, "ALL ROIGHT YA GITS. WE IZ LEAVIN' DIS PARTY FER NOW." He shouted into a little device pinned to his shoulder, "BORIS, CUT US LOOSE BUT NO STOMPIN'." The claws of the titan closed on the Orca, ripping large holes into its sides in the middle of the shootout. The Orks and Blue pressed forward and grabbed hold of the claws. The claws then retracted and allowed the critically damaged ship to chug along for a bit before its engines petered out as it crashed unceremoniously into the ground. Boris then turned around, farted out a few grots to splatter on the broken craft, and left. Mini earthquakes followed in his wake.

After an hour or so of searching, Shas'Vre Pan'zah found the battered and bruised body of Shas'El K'Lem P'rer in the dark and debris. He was still breathing. He was also stripped to his underclothes. Amusing. Pan'zah grabbed the tattered and dirty robe and covered the Shas'El with it.

He coughed and stirred, "Status report, Shas'Vre?"

"We've crashed landed. The Orks grabbed us out of the sky, took that Fio'La back, and tossed us away like rubbish. Rescue will be here in before sunrise."

"We're going to have to tell the Shas'O, aren't we."

"Yes, Shas'El. You will, Shas'El."

"I'm telling you, retrieving that Fio'La will be a priority from now on."

"Let's decide that when you have clothes again, Shas'El."

"We'll crush them with our superior forces and firepower. We will end those Scraplootas. For the Greater Good."

"Of course we will, Shas'El."

K'Lem P'rer started to lose consciousness again, "Those Orks were really something, weren't they, Pan'zah?"

Shas'Vre Pan'zah imagined the promotion he would receive in the near future, the Shas'O would probably grumble as he received it, still shaking his head about the previous Shas'El...

"No shit, Shas'El."


	3. blue and the farseer

again i don't own anything, even the story...

again anonymous author.

blue gets a mind visit from a farseer.

Warlock Zielt was perturbed. Perhaps perturbed wasn't the best word for it. Imagine the sound of a faucet. A dripping faucet. The drips are inconsistent and random so you can't anticipate the next drip, but still constant. You want no more than to tighten the valves and finally be rid of the faucet, but you can't. It's in your boss's personal bathroom and you certainly aren't allowed anywhere near there. But you hear it. And it is unceasing. You hear it at work, at home, in your car, in the shower... Every day, all day. For months, years even. All these drips dropping into an ever larger bucket of utter annoyance, threatening to one day spill over...

That is but a taste of what Zielt felt.

"Farseer, may I play daemon's advocate here?" He tried not to look irritated, an act he had nearly perfected. His left bottom eyelid was the only thing that betrayed him.

"Of course, Zielt. It's why I keep you around. Your adversity to new ideas and your constant negativity are both charmingly quaint and quite useful as feedback. I often proofread my plans as I'm telling you off." Farseer Vaedrisa was concentrating very hard on the static of the viewscreen. It was funny what got you to psychically tuned. The previous Farseer had to hum Imperial battle hymns to herself.

Zielt rolled his eyes the tiniest amount. Ah yes, this old song and dance. "I am honored to feature so heavily in your thought processes, Farseer." Was she going to use the child or the Gyrinx this time?

"Well, it was either you or that child, and I'm not a very good babysitter."

"Truly honored, Farseer." He cleared his throat, interrupting whatever snark Vaedrisa was about to throw at him, and continued, "What use would interrogating the Tau have?"

"That is what you take issue with, Warlock? Out of all of the other things that I am currently trying to do, you choose to take issue with the most sensible?"

"The Tau isn't even an Ork! I thought you'd try that Threegrot one first, or the Big Mek."

The Farseer waved her hand in annoyance, not breaking her eye contact with the viewscreen, "But therein lies the rub. The Tau isn't even an Ork. So what's going on? Does this not intrigue you? Don't answer that." Zielt shut his mouth again. "The way I see it, the Scraplootas are a weapon given to us by providence. If the fate of the Craftworld is to rely on such a weapon, it would be foolish not to inspect it as thoroughly as possible. But what first? The scope? The trigger? The barrel? Parts that we are familiar with, if not this exact style or version? No. First let us inspect the seemingly superfluous piece that does not seem to fit, the piece that we do not understand. Let us understand it, and let us see how the weapon functions without this piece."

There was the dripping faucet again. Warlock Zielt never knew if Farseer Vaedrisa really had the good of the craftworld first and foremost in her mind or if that damn Ork obsession came first. Sure, that's what she said, everything she did was actually for the good of the Craftworld. Staring at static for hours on end was done for the good of the Craftworld. The way she stuffed her face with sweets one a week was also done for the good of the Craftworld. But with the Orks, he couldn't help but wonder...

"And you are convinced the Tau is that piece?" As opposed to the Titan, the WAAAGH enslaved Chaos Daemon, or maybe Threegrot.

"She is the anomaly. The other pieces are accounted for."

"Including the Titan?"

"Especially the Titan."

The Warlock furrowed his eyebrows, "So we have to go take her?"

"I prefer to see it as borrowing. But yes." The Farseer was also hoping that she was more… civilized. She wasn't exactly prepared to take on a creature with an overly chaotic mind.

That bucket threatened to spill over, and Zielt held it back with fingers placed on his temples. "Very well, Farseer, your will be done."

In a hammock somewhere in Boris's right arm, Da Blue Grot dreamed of Tau.

Many faces, the slits between their eyes flaring as they laughed. They were children. Only children. They didn't know any better. They really didn't.

"CASTELESS BITCH."

They kicked at her and pushed her to the ground. It wasn't their faults. They understood not their own cruelty.

If she was lucky, when the old Tau came over to break it up, she'd only be bruised and slightly bloody. If she wasn't, she'd be coughing up blood for the rest of the day.

It wasn't her fault either. She didn't mean to.

Her mother was of the Earth Caste. Her father… well, her mother swore that her father was of the Earth Caste too. But no one else knew who he was and her mother refused to tell. The omission was damning. If he was truly of the Earth Caste, a Fio'Vre or a Fio'El, maybe, a bastard child would certainly be dishonorable, but nothing bad would come of it. The way her mother refused to confirm or deny allegations could only mean that her father was of a different caste. Probably some hotheaded Shas'La that caught her fancy. Or worst, a casteless. If confirmed, he, she, and their misbegotten child would be thrown out of the caste system, to beg and die in the streets of some colony world. Their crime was grave, they placed themselves before the Greater Good. It simply wasn't tolerated. The Tau equivalent to Romeo and Juliet has the cast cheering at the suicides of those selfish cross-caste betrayers of the Greater Good. Even the allegations were enough for the Earth Caste to send Blue's mother into the streets. And there Blue was born. She was found on the doorstep of the local orphanage soon after; a spanner and a note explaining how the child was of the Earth Caste were tucked into her basket with her.

It wasn't very pleasant at the orphanage. She was the only Earth Caste there, everyone else where Fire Caste children, war orphans. Perhaps they would have treated her better in different circumstances, but the rumors had outlived her mother. The other children wanted nothing of her, save when they were looking for someone to bully or tease. It was all fun for them. They practiced teamwork drills and honed their hand to hand combat on Blue. They didn't think that there was anything wrong with any of it. In fact, the old Tau even warned Blue not to fight back, as it would just provoke them, and the Shas'Saal were going to be better fighters than she was as a Fio'Saal.

But maybe there was some validity in the claims that Blue was not all Earth Caste. She took the beatings but it pained her to act meek, to just curl up into a ball until the other children lost interest. She wanted to fight back. She even had her spanner, a simple but strong little thing that belonged to her mother. Blue had tried it out. It would work as a proper weapon and she could hold her own. But she didn't dare go against the wishes of the old Tau. She didn't want to put herself before the Greater Good like her mother was accused of.

But one day enough was enough. Blue singled out the ringleader of her tormentors and challenged him to a fight. One weapon of any type was allowed. He chose his flashy gun that induced minor electric shock. She chose her spanner. The fight was brutal and short. Firing twice, he assumed Blue would crumple like she had done before. Instead, she gritted her teeth through the pain and closed the gap between them, knocking him flat with the spanner. Then, while he was still stunned, she raised the spanner over her head, and all of her fury, all of her frustration and desperation came out at the same time. She struck once, twice, again and again. She could almost hear her former tormentor begging for mercy, but she didn't relent. She couldn't relent. She kept going…

Blue work up with a jolt. Her body was covered in a cold sweat and she was panting hard. So much dark blue, on the ground, on her spanner, on her. It would have been merciful if only he had… No. That was behind her now. She was an Ork now. Not some Tau git.

It wasn't her fault either. Children understood not their own strength…

Something was wrong. Blue sat up and started looking around while catching her breath, she realized she wasn't in Boris anymore. There wasn't that constant creaking and moving about. She was in a proper bed, and not just a hammock. Mr. Squig was nowhere to be seen. At least she had all of her clothes.

She finally noticed the Farseer at the foot of her bed, also trying to catch her breath while wiping at her face.

"What the zog?"

"Greetings, Da Blue Grot of the Scraplootas. I, uh, hope your dreams have been... I'm not fooling anyone, am I." She adjusted her glasses and tried to get her hair under control. Damn thing always got worse when she was up to psychic shenanigans, frizzling everywhere like that.

"You was in my head?"

"Ah, so you could tell. How interesting, what gave it away?" The Tau, being a non-psychic race, weren't very good at telling when they were being mind probed. Generally, they would think it as a dream of some sort, or nightmare.

Blue got up on her knees and shuffled closer to the Elder, "I DON'T get dreams like that. Not now, not never. I ain't a Tau. I'm an Ork." Well that explained it. Were these memories repressed? With all of the grievous bodily harm that goes on in a normal Orky day, why was this a prominent memory? Also, what a peculiar distinction. She didn't think herself half and half or a Tau amongst Orks, but a fully fledged Ork? When did she get so close to the Farseer? Was she always this mad?

Vaedrisa pushed Blue back a little, "Relax, Blue I don't mean any harm, I was just trying to understand you better, a Tau in the middle—"

"I AIN'T A TAU, I'M AN ORK." Blue lunged and had her hands around the Farseer's neck before she knew what she was doing.

She was thrown back. Farseer Vaedrisa's hair stood on end as the air around her crackled with psychic power. This was not going to plan, just like everything else about this damn Tau. "Okay then. Ork. You've made your point, now let me make mine." Blue crashed into the ceiling above the bed, painfully. "I am in control here. Never touch me again." She set Blue down again gently, and then added, "Unless I allow for it."

The Ork and the Eldar glared at each other as Vaedrisa's hair slowly unfrizzled.

Then the Farseer suddenly smiled, "Okay, good, now that that's over and done with, perhaps we can continue?" She tried patting down her hair to little avail, produced a clipboard out of nowhere, and started scribbling furiously.

Blue looked confused.

"Well, I was going to include a physical examination, but I guess that's out of the question right now, so I guess we move on to the interrogation. Or interview, if you prefer."

"What do you want, ya git?"

"Lovely. Now, how old are you now?"

Blue wanted to yell at the Eldar more but found herself answering instead, "Why's that matter? Ten-ish?" Vaedrisa wrote that down.

"Tau reach adulthood in roughly ten years. And yet, you're clearly still adolescent."

"Well, that's a zoggin' mystery right there." Blue shrugged, "I guess grots don't grow old." She had meant to insult the Eldar in the middle of all that, but it didn't happen.

The Farseer's eyes brightened, "Really? That's a fascinating fact about Orks that no one's ever mentioned before!" She balled her fists and waved them in small circles, "How do you avoid overpopulation then?"

"Ah, because grots get krumped all the time. But we really have too many of the gitz."

"Oh. Well, that's not as amazing as I thought it would be." Vaedrisa pouted and picked up her clipboard from her lap.

"Oh, and you're a right git," Blue said lamely.

"That's nice, dear. Anyway, so I'm assuming you haven't realized you are a few shades bluer than the average Tau."

Was this Eldar daft? But instead Blue looked down at her hands."What." She didn't notice any changes in her skin. Of course, she hadn't really been keeping track.

"Is there any particular reason that they call you Blue?"

Oh so she was blind and daft. "For Orks, Blue's lucky, of course. And they think I'm lucky." The Farseer wrote a lot on her clipboard, a fact that bothered Blue. And her mouth wasn't working right.

"So you're literally turning bluer because they think that makes you lucky?"

"Maybe that's how the WAAAGH works." Why all the questions? It wasn't like she knew the zoggin' answers.

Why was she answering anyway?

"So what is this Waaagh, I mean, to you?" The Eldar had of course careful records about these things, but it was never from an Ork's perspective. This was important work Vaedrisa was doing. For posterity.

"I dunno, it's proppa Orky, you know? The WAAAGH surrounds us and flows through us, binding Orks together in proppa warbands so's we can get to fightin' and krumpin' and winnin' in the WAAAGH."

Vaedrisa tried to hide biting her lip every time Blue said the word "WAAAGH." The way Blue said it was just so amazing. Better than she could ever enunciate it, with all its throaty spittle spewing goodness. She cleared her throat and continued, "Now, do you think your past has anything to do with how you are now?"

There was still something very wrong here. Blue just couldn't place what. "Why should it? It ain't coming back any. And I'm an Ork now. Not some Tau git. Didn't even krump him properly." She didn't mean to let that slip, "I mean, of course I krumped him proppa. I'm an Ork through and through."

"Uh huh." The Farseer looked down at her clipboard. She had basically filled three pages with copious notes and the Tau was becoming increasingly aware of the intrusion. It was time to wrap this up.

"Uh, just one other thing. Can you say Titanloota for me?"

"Titanloota? Why?"

"N-no reason." Not as glorious as coming from the Warboss himself, but it would do.

"What the zog is up with this place? Why the zog does it all feel so strange?" Blue tried to get up from where she was sitting on the bed and found she couldn't.

Oi.

"Anyway, I think our time is over."

Ya.

"Do you hear something?" It was echo-y and slow.

Git.

"That was a good chat. I'll catch you again someday?"

Get.

"What is all this, ya daft pointy 'ead?" Blue made out the first few syllables.

Up.

Vaedrisa didn't answer. She got up and started walking towards the door. Was there a door to this room before? What had she been sitting on?

Quit.

Suddenly the gravity in the place reversed and Vaedrisa and Blue went tumbling towards the ceiling.

"-MUCKIN' ABOUT."

The Big Mek had flipped Blue out of her hammock. "NOW GET UP BEFORE I KRUMP YA. OI DON'T BELIEVE IT. SLEEPIN' IN LIKE SUM SOFF GIT. WE GOTS WORK TA DO."

Blue held her head for a moment as the room settled. The Right Arm of Boris. Mr. Squig, her tools, her workshop. Everything was there. She could move around fine. There wasn't any weird Eldar. No bed, no questions. Blue did her best to push all of that out of her head. No more muckin' about. If Big Mek had to wake her up, she must have slept in really late. There was work to do. She grabbed her spanner.

"Farseer!"

Vaedrisa groaned. Everything hurt.

"Farseer, are you alright?" That was Zielt's voice.

She took her helmet off, it slipped out of her hands. What a disastrous exit.

"This mission got out of hand." Ahh yes. Classic Zielt. Let's say the whole mission got out of hand when only the last few seconds got out of hand.

"What are you talking about? That worked, didn't it? Went off without a hitch."

"Several of our Warlocks are bleeding out of their ears. But yes. Let us consider that a total success." Win a decisive victory and he'd still be worrying about the casualties. But perhaps it was necessary. Someone still needed to care about those sorts of things.

Vaedrisa sat up and rubbed at her eyes. "Well, I made it back with my invaluable information about the Tau and her relationship with the Orks. And I'm alive, despite projecting myself a few hundred thousand kilometers through space to connect a psychic bridge with a non-psyker and only a handful of Warlocks at my disposal to amplify and augment my power. I'd say nothing went terribly wrong." She looked around. Strange, where was everyone? Everything? She wasn't still in a dream, right?

"Are you sure, Farseer?" And what was Warlock Zielt doing above her?

"Yeah, I'm positive, Zielt. What's going—" She looked up. Zielt was looking up at her too. Only difference was his feet were on the ground.

The Farseer stood up on the ceiling of the chamber.

"Oh zog it."


	4. minitrukk job

own nothing not even the story.

and author if you read this let me know what you want. my only goal is to share this awesome story with more folks.

some gretchin think they can pull a fast one on blue...oh how wrong they are.

Every ork aboard the Loot-hava was supposed to be working on Boris and getting him ready for the upcoming job. Farseer Vaedrisa had hired the Scraplootas to remove a bunch of sleepy metalboys the planet they were now ordering and had told them to be extra prepared, so the Boss had put Tinka Zizzbitz and all his mekboys (including the Big Mek's favorite cobalt colored grot) to work making Boris extra flash. As such, the Mek Shop was abandoned, save a few mekboys poking their heads in for extra tools and supplies for the task at hand and a collection of shadowy shapes creeping along the walls of the shop. A band of four gretchins had snuck their way into the Mek Shop when the mekboys weren't looking with a very specific goal in mind. They slunk past piles of scrap and half finished warbikes to the back of the shop, where their prize awaited them. Sectioned off from the rest of the Mek Shop, a smaller workstation labeled "Blue's Korner" was guarded by twin posts with decapitated gretchin heads in various states of mutilation hung. This was where what the gretchins sought sat: a miniature, grot sized wartrakk, in perfect working condition after its umpteenth rebuilding. Their orders had been clear and explicit: make sure Blue wasn't allowed to use her toy. Whether they stole it or simply wrecked it didn't matter to Derknitt, so long as Blue didn't have it, he'd pay the grots more teef than they could hold. Being a clever little grot, Blue had removed a piece of the trakk, something she called a 'key', making the vehicle so that it could only work if you either had the key or knew how to rearrange the wires beneath it. The grot tasked to hotwiring the trakk hesitated before ducking under it.

"Wot if she sees us?" he hissed worriedly

"Shut yer gob and theys won't finds us, you git!" the leader of the gang hissed back, smacking the offending gretchin upside the head

Muttering, the gretchin slid under and began tinkering with the insides while the rest stood lookout for any straggling mekboys or even worse, Da Blue Grot herself. The gretchin boss could already see it now, riding his very own wartrakk, drinking the finest fungus beer teef could buy, and maybe using the rest of his teef to buy his way out of the Grotocracy and retire some place nice. He heard Boris's shoulders had a lovely view come fighting days. He was so lost in his daydreaming that he almost didn't hear the screaming of his gretchin mechanic. Two of the other gretchins grabbed their thrashing partner in crime and pulled him out from under the trakk, they inspected their fallen comrade for wounds. After a thorough investigation, they realized he had no face, with what was left of his skull gurgling and fizzing, producing thin green wisps of smoke. It had been a trap all along! They readied their weapons and began looking for the hiding place of their assailant. Sure, she may have been lucky, but there were four of them! – three of them! – and they were prepared for her.

Seeing the gretchins hunt for her made it hard for Blue to suppress the giggling she felt building up inside of her. They were pretty clever, rooting through barrels and looking under piles of junk for Blue. They lost one of their own to carelessness and her acid bomb already; there was no way they were going to lose another. But sharp as they were, Blue was that much sharper. See, she knew they would look every which way for her, under bikes, inside scrap piles, one even dared to look inside Zizzbitz's personal room, but not a single one of them looked up. One hand holding her dakka and the other gripping the bottom of a modified Tau Gun Drone, Blue and Mr. Squig descended on the Squigkopta with a hearty WAAAAGH, no longer able to contain herself.

For most orks, aiming is more of a vague belief than any concrete concept, but for Blue, the ability to line up a shot and take it came naturally, even when she wasn't paying much attention to where she was shooting. She took out the leader first, as he was the only one armed with a gun. Bullets ripped through his diminuitive frame and finally ventilated his skull with a spout of blood. The other two tried to group together as she released her grasp on the Squigkopta and pounced on one of them, beating him senselessly with her trusty spanner and laughing with innocent, unadulterated glee as the final intruder lost his nerve and ran in sheer terror. After the grot beneath her stopped moving and the thwacks of her spanner got more and more wet, Blue arched her back and craned her head backwards, affording an upside down view of Mr. Squig chasing the final gretchin, his Squigkopta puttering and whizzing faithfully. Satisfied by the sight, Blue gave the grot corpse a few more good whacks for good measure. Once that got boring, she moved to grab her tools; a small buzzsaw attached to the end of a short pole the length of her forearm and some pliers. The heads would make a great addition to her scarepole and the Grot teef wouldn't be worth much, but they would be enough to buy herself two mugs of fungus beer, one in celebration of today's victory and one to bribe Tinka to ignore her "mucking about". Humming a little diddy to herself, she headed out to get back to working on Boris. She could retrieve the mangled corpse of the last grot later, in the meantime she'd let Mr. Squig play with his new chew toy until she was done with the day's chores. Maybe then she could get to the bottom of the sudden increase in grot assaults on her Bluetrukka…


	5. scraploota sortie

own nothing, just reposting an awesome story.

"…an' dat was da fourth time I killed a squiggoth in single combat…"

Blue shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Rockeata droned on, rattling off another tale or even the same one as the last as Snekkit listened with rapt attention. This was the part she hated the most. The waiting. Scouts had killed some space marine scouts and spotted a small task force moving in on the location of their base camp, where Urtylug and Tinka were busy sorting through the loot and fixing up Boris. Snekkit had stolen the little honorary ork away when Tinka wasn't looking for the sortie that was assembled and Blue had been more eager to tag along and krump some gits with the turret mounted on Snekkit's broad shoulders, but she had always hated this part. Snekkit may have been able to sit still and listen to Rockeata while they waited in ambush, but Blue wanted nothing more than to shout and holler and shoot and loot like a proper ork.

"…dat little encounta taught me ta neva leave me ammo in me back pocket…"

Blue curled up into a ball on the little platform she was situated in, the leafy camouflaged tarp providing adequate shade from the sun. She tried to imagine the occasional jostling Snekkit provided was the rhythmic rumble of Boris or the gentle hum of the Loot-hava, but it just wasn't the same. In Boris or the Loot-hava, a good fight could be days away and there was plenty of time to muck about and relax, but out here there could be fighting to be had just seconds away and the anticipation ate her up inside. She sat back up and sighed, trying not to draw to much attention to herself. Otherwise, Rockeata might live up to his name and try to give her another rock to gnaw on to "calm her nerves". Instead she decided to clean her various guns yet again to keep herself occupied as well as polishing Snekkit's should armor. She even went as far as to brush and toy with his signature mohawk until Snekkit lazily swatted his hand in her direction, signaling to her that she was being a nuisance.

"…so I looked 'straight in da eye an' said 'I may be a 'ard'eaded brute, but you'z a pansy eldar git' an' den I headbutted 'im, right den and dere, and 'is whole head jus' splattered an' broke ta bits like when you'z accidentally step on a grot, 'elmet and all…"

Blue sighed and fidgeted again and looked about the tree line they were hiding in. She took off her helmet, inspected it for any scuffs or smudges she could polish out and upon finding none, polished her helmet anyway and put it back on, only to repeat the process a few minutes later. She was about to start pestering the grot perched similarly upon Rockeata's shoulders in a big fancy lookout box when a hushed whispering started filtering through the ambush party. This was it! Those stupid metal humies were about to wander right into their trap! She could hardly wait! Unlike those squishy humies or those tau gits, Space Marines always put up a fight instead of falling over in the first swing on a chainaxe. And they never cheated and got back up after you killed them like those sleepy zogging metalboys. She glanced over at Rockeata' grot, Skopeshot, his eye trained down a minuscule orkified tau rifle that Blue had built for Rockeata at Snekkit's earnest request, a slight grin crept onto her face.

"Psst" she whispered, deciding to pester him anyways.

"Shuts it, you. It be's fightin time." Was all she got in return.

"Bet I's gonna get more than you's." the petite blue ork taunted

"Yer on"

"Loser buys squigpies. Deal?"

"Deal's, you sorry excuse of's a snotling. I likes mines nice an' crispylike."

"That's nice, seeing as you'll be payin for the zoggin things."

That order of business settled, Blue turned her attention to the clearing just as the space marines rounded the bend into view. She could hardly contain her excitement as she saw them. Featherheads! They must be looking for Boris, seeing as those ones hated him something fierce. Of all the space marines to fight, these were her favorite, because they were so easy to rile up. There was a good twenty or so of them, but they were no match for the fifty strong kommandos and their uncountable amount of grots.

This particular detachment of the Blood Jaguars had been hunting the Scraplootas for some time now and had finally tracked them down to this planet, trying to get their hands on their quite literally infernal titan and destroy the heretical machine. Their orders had been to send forth a small task force that could quickly discover the location of the Imperator-class blight upon their chapter as well as deal with any threats the orks might throw at them. The Blood Jaguars were confident their small strike force, lead by Sergeant Huitzil, would be more than enough to deal with any straggling orks they might find, given their years of training specifically to the task of destroying the foul greenskins.

But the Scraplootas were not conventional orks.

They had been following the clearing made by the orks and their path of destruction for a few days now with no real presence of actual orks to be noted. The sergeant stopped, some sixth sense of his, honed by years of ork hunting on Tenocit, alerting him that something was amiss. The ground beneath them started shaking and rising, giving way to grots. By the Emperor! Dozens and dozens of grots, buried in the ground beneath their very feet! They had just barely begun to react to the new threat when the trees figuratively exploded with orks and gunfire. Damn it! Where were their scouts?! They were supposed to be running amongst the trees and covering their approach! Of course, nothing could prepare Huitzil for the sight that awaited him.

Blue was currently having the time of her life, as she did every time Snekkit took her out on sorties. After the digga grots had ambushed the Featherheads, everything flew into a rage around her in a cacophony of shouts and gunfire, her own voice and dakka contributing cheerily to the mix. Skopeshot was firing as quickly as he could, and quite accurately for an ork, with over half of his shots hitting their targets, and some of those even hitting somewhere important with one in particular knocking one of their beloved two-sided chainswords right out of the hand of one hapless space marine. Now that Snekkit was charging up close to tear things apart with his trusty chainaxe, it was time for Blue's favorite part. She grabbed a device she had made to emulate Boris's big booming voice and shouted.

"OIY YA LOUSY BEAKY FEATHERHEADS! YOUR EMPRAH'S A LAZY GIT AND THAT LITTLE BORIS OF YOURS IS NOTHIN MORE THAN AN OVERGROWN METAL GROT!"

Blue quickly put the Borisian Booma down and gripped her turret tightly. She loved taunting space marines because they didn't even know how to yell properly and with their go-to insult being "Filthy greenskins", they usually didn't know how to respond to a blue ork calling their beloved emperor a git. This band was no exception, with all the remaining marines pausing for the briefest of moments before redirecting all of their efforts on reaching Snekkit and his offending grot, struggling against the green tide of grots all the way. She could even see the one helmetless one's eye twitch and mouth froth as he uttered an endless stream of raging incoherence, punctuated by few key swears such as "YOU…YOU THIRCE HERETICAL DOUBLE XENO! I SHALL END YOU!"

Blue could only giggle.

Sergeant Huitzil had had more than enough! None of this was going according to plan and now one of the Scraplootas – a tau child (a CHILD!) posing as an ork, no less! – dared insult the sacred Sun-Emperor and most cherished Chapter Master in the same sentence?! Even if he were to die this day, even if he were to fail his chapter and his Emperor, he would see that this, this abomination is brought to justice! He saw his men get cut down by the hail of gunfire and grots alike, but he would not falter, for his goal was in sight. The blue blasphemer would face justice by his hand and his hand alone. Everything else, even the grots chewing and stabbing at his armor, was a blur to the Black Rage Huitzil now felt. Using the last of his momentum, he shoulder barged against the large ork his target was roosted upon with all his might, sending the ork sprawling and the tau sailing across the battlefield. Huitzil stepped forward to claim the crumpled bundle and his justice.

"You do not even deserve to be sacrificed upon the altar, pitiful tau." he said, reaching down to grasp her. She mumbled something unintelligible against the ground.

"You'll have to speak up, little tau." he taunted once more, lifting the little Earth Caste up to face. Huitzil wanted to look her in the eye when he killed her. He wanted to enjoy the look of fear on her face and relish his last moments of life. What greeted him was the coldest stare he had seen in his life.

"I said I ain't no zoggin tau, zog it! I's an ork! Always an' foreva!"

With an enthusiastic WAAAGH from the tau, Huitzil felt something sharp dig into his throat with such force that he fell flat on his arse and lost his hold the little tau girl. Sputtering and coughing blood, as he tried to dislodge the cylindrical object, he heard it begin to fizz ominously. Before Huitzil's brain had enough time to properly assess the situation and put two and two together, it was promptly severed from his body at the neck and flung in a hundred different directions.

Blue holstered her handkannon, dubbing it a success, and muttered a low "Lousy git" as she brushed some of the humie brain matter off of her helmet as the rest of the Scraplootas swept up the last remaining space marines. Snekkit then surprised her from behind, hoisting her up by the waist and turning her several different ways until he finally found the right combination that made it to where the lucky little grot was right side up and facing them.

"Zog it, Blue! Ya 'ad me worried! Da Big Mek woulda krumped me fer sure if I'da gone an' wrecked 'is favorite grot!" Snekkit fussed over Blue, licking his massive thumb and wiping it against her face, trying to clean her up to the best of his ability.

"Knock it off ya overgrown git, I's just fine, see? I couldn't call meself a right proper ork if'n I couldn't handle a stupid humie." Blue giggled as she pushed his hand away. "'Sides, I'm lucky!"

"Zoggin right you iz!" Snekkit perched his favorite grot gunna on his shoulder as they walked back to camp. "Didja see 'is 'ead asplode like dat?! You isn't a weirdgrot, iz you?"

"I made it happen ya git!"

"You IZ a weirdgrot"

"Not like dat, you git! With me handkannon!"

"You'z GOTTA make me wunna dose!"

"Only if you loot me one of these beaky heads. They'll look right flash on the front of the bike I's got in tha works. Oh, and run us up next ta Rockeata! I'm hungerin for some squigpies…"

It was a good day to be a Scraploota. Then again, most days are.


	6. shake!

again own nothing

mr. squig learns a new trick.

"Shake."

"Shake."

"C'mon, shake!"

The squig looked up at its owner, head cocked to one side in confusion.

"Shake, zog you, shake!"

The squig rolled over, presenting its belly/chin for rubbing. Blue sighed.

"You's zoggin terrible at this, Mr. Squig". She chided, but fed him his treat and scratched his belly anyways, much to the squig's delight. 'Roll over' was about the only trick she could teach the beast, so she figured she'd better reward him for it, lest he forget that one too.

Maybe this just required a different approach, Blue reasoned to herself. Maybe just yelling at him until he did what she wanted wasn't the way to go about things. Manually rolling Mr. Squig back into a standing position, Blue looked her pet right in the eyes, grabbing his face and redirecting the squiggly beast's gaze to match hers as needed.

"Look at me, My Squig – no, over here you git – now that's a good Mr. Squig, now shake." She grabbed one of his claws, lifting it up and down in the facsimile of a handshake. "Shaaake. That's a good squiggly beast, just like that!" she fed him another bone to reinforce his rigorous training as she let go of his claw "Now shake for me Mr. Squig! Shake!"

The squig looked up at its owner, head cocked to one side in confusion.

"Zog it, you git! Shake!"

Suddenly, something began to click in the small beast's mind, and Blue could see his mental strain behind his beady little eyes.

"You can do it, boy! Shake!"

The squig raised a claw, looking down at it and at Blue's outstretched hand, head snapping back and forth between the two objects as if to form some sort of connection between them.

"That's it, boy! You've got it! Now shake!"

Mr. Squig suddenly jabbed his claw out to the side, far away from Blue's hand, and began to spastically rattle his whole body back and forth, tail and tongue alike flapping with wild abandon from their respective ends. Mr. Squig was indeed shaking.

Blue fed Mr. Squig the rest of the bones she had on her. That was the best zogging trick she'd ever seen.


	7. sneaky blue

i own nothing not even the story.

now, this is the last chapter i found, i may add to it myself but we will see.

"Be wary of elderly folk in professions where practitioners do not usually live to grow old." A common saying in many different cultures, it has almost universal appeal amongst mortal races because it rings with truth. But does it apply when your entire culture is in one profession and all the practitioners are thousands of years old? Should you be wary of them at all?

Of course, new Chaos Space Marines are created and ordained every day, but these never seem to integrate as fully into the brotherhood, or at least the twisted version of brotherhood, that the Chaos Space Marines share. They also tend not to last as long, and the overwhelming majority of Chaos Marines are the same as the ones that fought in the Horus Heresy. Just look at the Thousand Sons. Those mounds of dust haven't gone anywhere in all of their innumerable battles and years of war. I mean, at least I don't think they dust every recruit they get. It would be odd to have them all geneseeded and surgically fixed up and then to disintegrate them to avoid mutation. Of course, that's something Tzeentch is all over so you never really know. Perhaps it's all a part of a grand plan. But from what I've seen of those bird brained schemers tend to do a lot of pretending that things were working the way they planned it.

Once, when we actually had most of a full regiment of those rubric marines as allies and their leader as our joint Warbands' Chaos Lord, the guy never once told us what he was thinking and ended up cackling "Just as planned!" even as the Orks were pulverizing his face into something that resembled a run over and stomped on genestealer. We still have one of those empty shells around. Not much of a conversational partner and he needs to be wheeled all over the place after the psyker lord bit the, well, dust. He looks sad all the time now, even when I try to cheer him up. It may just be his helmet though. He doesn't exactly have much behind that. Anyway, what was I saying?

Oh right, so my original point was that most Chaos Space Marines seem to fall under the category of "Unmitigated Badass" simply because we've lived so long in a mostly untenable situation that is best described as "perpetual warfare" or "only war." And yet, I really don't think that's the case. At least, I don't feel like a badass. I asked Gilnstrum if he felt like a badass, and after pshawing me and reminding me that he was a World Eater and that World Eater was a proper noun that was synonymous with the phrase "total badass" he admitted, no. No, he didn't feel like a badass much.

Sometimes he'd do something awesome, like twist around in a full circle before nailing an enemy combatant in the face with a round from a bolter he was shooting with one hand while enraged, but then he'd end up feeling quite lame because he'd turn around to ask "Did you see that?" and there would never be anyone behind him to answer him. Or else it was just another loyalist guardsman who was too busy whimpering and crying and unloading his lasgun into the air to notice. Those guardsmen get everywhere. Strolling through a city with a raiding party, it is impossible to even turn a corner or open a door or lift a rock up while looking for usable goods without finding another one huddling in fear.

If only our cannon fodder were so numerous. We have basically no slaves or cultists to speak of. Really, all we have are other Chaos Marines. And believe me, they get really peeved when you call them cannon fodder. Like thrown-out-of-a-cruiser-in-midflight peeved. Let me tell you, that one hurt. At least they came back for me. And the berserker did sheepishly apologize and spend the rest of the night repairing the hole he'd made in our craft. Of course the guy then died a week later fighting with the Titan that those Orks have. He was one hell of a fighter too. He sat back up and waved a weapon vaguely in the air after the Titan had stomped on him. He didn't quite survive the second time that massive foot came down. At least he tried. His fellow Khornate berserkers went the same way, against incredible odds, but it didn't look really badass. It looked somewhat foolish. Also like overkill.

But yeah, I've really never felt quite badass in the thousands of years I've been an Iron Warrior. I mean, sure, there were numerous badass moments, and I've certainly felt the joy of kicking ass and taking names, or even skipping the paperwork entirely. But I've never felt like a walking killing machine and I've never spoken completely in bad clichés without feeling extremely corny. I've also never chewed on scenery or carried around Carnifex meat hams or kicked bubblegum or whatever it is that makes people think you're a badass. I mean, I've never entirely played it safe, but I haven't exactly been balls to the walls daring either. It just never seemed like a good idea to go on a reckless charge through enemy forces just to prove I could. I mean, I know I can, what's the point of showing everyone and then getting cut down by a wayward slug from a Titan mounted railgun? I've never done the embracing death thing, which may be why I've never been too badass. Maybe if there were another Black Crusade or something. I never got to see much of the action during the last one, When I was finally going to be deployed, they called the whole thing off and I ended up in this backwater sector. Anyway, if I had to go, I'd want to fight worthy enemies, mostly so I don't end up in the books with the footnote "slain by loyalist guardsmen" or "stuck by a grot." That would be kind of awful.

Gilnstrum agrees with my sentiment, even as a World Eater, especially as a World Eater. He says he'd feel like he was letting everyone down if something mundane killed him. He personally wants to go out riding a Carnifex strapped with bombs into a wave of loyalist Ultramarines while wielding three chainswords and snorting illicit drugs or something off the back of their chapter master he was anally violating with the chapter master's own powerfist. But that's mostly his rage talking, and he doesn't actually really want to go out at all. He's perfectly fine with ripping and tearing and shooting into the guys we fight every now and then. But he wouldn't do anything rash. He was pretty beat up after that warband of Khornate Berserkers were wiped out. Okay, we were all really beat up, but I mean emotionally. It was like being back with the boys for Gilnstrum. He definitely misses the company, being the only World Eater in our current Warband and all. I tried my best to cheer him up by offering to go running through an Imperial city slaughtering civilians with him, but apparently Iron Warrior berserking just isn't the same. He apologized profusely, but I understood.

Our current Warband is mostly Word Bearers and Luna Wolves, though we have a couple of Death Guard that stink up the back of the cruiser, a good deal of Alpha Legionnaires that keep to themselves and leave by themselves on their own Raider without saying anything, two Emperor's Children that just really creep me out, that one Rubric Marine, and Gilnstrum and me. I serve as the cook of the ship. Since we have less surviving slaves than marines, we find ourselves doing mundane tasks around the cruiser or camp. Often times I made the most of impalpable ingredients that we raided from whatever worlds in this desolate sector we end up on. Sometimes one of the crew will challenge my position as cook and we end up squaring off before a panel of judges, but I always end up making a better dish.

That's not important right now. What is important and goes with my previous thesis that I keep wandering away from, is that Gilnstrum and I have been here ever since that original distress call from that Chaos Lord from whenever ago, when that Titan was stolen from Chaos right under the noses of those loyalist Blood Jaguars. Our warbands and another World Eater warband were the only ones to respond to the call. And afterwards we suffered heavily losses from both the Blood Jaguars and the Scraplootas. But the thing was, when we left with our tails between our legs, ready to leave the sector, the Warp spit us back out in the same sector. Again and again. No matter how hard we tried, we could not break out of this wretched sector with only one group of loyalist marines, a handful of Imperial worlds defended by planetary defense forces, some Tau petering in from the neighboring sector, a bunch of Orks, one craftworld and some Dark Eldar, what seemed like a tomb world, and one destroyed Chaos stronghold, completely razed to the ground, the very earth it stood on burnt and salted. One Warband strong, we weren't going to get much done. But Gilnstrum and I didn't give up hope. And eventually a Warband of Death Guards showed up, and despite the stench we got along pretty well, that is until they started outnumbering us as our fights kept getting more desperate. Absolute slobs those plague marines. They wouldn't know proper hygiene if it manifested as a daemon and tore through their forces, leaving behind streak free shines and significantly better smelling Marines. But they were also being beaten down and destroyed, systematically sometimes. So we ended up getting reinforced by lost Luna Wolves. And then Emperor's Children, and so on. But throughout all the chaos of the changing of guard and new self appointed warband leaders, Gilnstrum and I have stayed a constant.

We go way back, Gilnstrum and I. Back to when we were both scouts before the Heresy. We were stationed on the same world, a group of Iron Warriors and War Hounds. Every week we'd get together for a game of Emperorball or what have you, and it was generally good fun. Gilnstrum had always been a dumb jock, and they all said I had the potential to become a Librarian, if I ever manifested psyker powers. Which I didn't. Those were good times. The world was at peace and most of our duties included marching in parades. Of course, we were shipped off, but Gilnstrum and I kept in touch, signed up for the same tours of duty when we could.

Right before the Heresy, Gilnstrum and I were sent out to the far reaches of the Imperium with the rest of our regiments, we were to serve as the honor guard for this prince. A sad looking man-child who complained a lot, if I remember correctly. He was the nephew of a planetary lord who didn't want the guy moping around the palace anymore. So the lord sent the prince to a faraway world with a package. And both the prince and the package would stay on the world in exile. Or something like that. The prince's name was Hamtaro or something. Anyway, the exact situation escapes me after ten thousand years. We were basically at the planet when news of the Heresy erupted. Everyone else was super excited because this was apparently the big event Horus had been planning for a while now, and honestly I hadn't paid much attention at the interest meetings but I still wanted to know what the big hubbub was. In the excitement we killed the prince and commandeered the ship, turning it around and redirecting it towards Holy Terra. They kept talking about overthrowing the Imperium and even Gilnstrum was high strung and giddy about this. I personally had never been anywhere near Holy Terra, and didn't really have much of an opinion about the rule of the Imperium or the God Emperor. I guess coming from a backwater world does that to a guy. Gilnstrum had actually been in the presence of the God Emperor, close enough to see his radiance with his own eyes. He had described him as more beautiful and awe-inspiring than all of the Primarchs combined. So it was weird that he was all for overturning the guy's rule. I suppose he was swept up in the moment.

We exit the Warp to find out we had gotten stuck in a storm or something, because it was over. The Horus Heresy was over and Horus was dead and the God Emperor was mortally wounded. We were labeled as heretics, mostly because we responded to Horus's call and our legions were already declared traitor. So we left for the Eye of Terror like the rest of our forces. I don't remember it too well because it wasn't punctuated by high emotions like it was for other people. Gilnstrum still remembers how upset he was. Anyway, I guess this means I didn't so much turn traitor as rotate slightly in one direction. I didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards. A bunch of things happened after that, ten thousand years and a bunch of Black Crusades worth, but you get the picture.

Anyway, so Gilnstrum and I have been in this ever changing warband since the very beginning. We haven't even really gotten a chance to name ourselves because our numbers change so frequently. One of the Emperor's Children had said something along the lines of the Glorious Tragedians but we haven't really settled on anything. Neither of us has ever tried to take charge. It never works out well for the guy in charge. He's gone by the end of the month usually, and then there's some infighting and the ranks are switched around. Gilnstrum and I are pretty low in the pecking order, but that suits us fine. No high expectations of the guys who rank under those smelly-ass plague marines.

So yes, my point is, despite common sayings and whatnot, Gilnstrum and I are not the most badass members of the Warband. We don't even try. Yes, we're the most senior members, technically, and yes we look before we leap and yes we poke our bolters into bushes in case they contain loyalists or Orks, but in no way can you consider us elderly folk in professions where practitioners do not usually live to grow old. Okay, so yes, you can consider us that, I guess, though I still don't feel very elderly, but we're nothing to be wary of, as far as Chaos Space Marines go is I guess the point I'm trying to make. I mean, depending on who you are and what you do I guess Chaos Space Marines may be something to be wary of by default, but if you're trying to fish for badasses, there are a lot bigger fish in the sea.

The Tau before us blinks twice. She's at least let us sit upright in the netting we're trapped in, and she's given us both some of her rations, which was very generous of her. Especially because we're her prisoners.

...Just don't ask how we got into this position. I'll just say that there is properly paranoid and overly paranoid and be done with it. Second guessing is also a horrible horrible thing to do. Gilnstrum is still upset we spent so much time arguing over something that was clearly a trap.

She scratches her head, "So dat long spiel was just you sayin' you guys ain't a great catch?"

"Of course not! We fell for your stupid trap!" Those are the first intelligible words Gilnstrum has said this entire night. I don't know how intelligent that Tau was for thinking that we'd fall for that trap, or how intelligent she thinks Chaos Space Marines are that they'd fall for a trap like that, or how intelligent we are for falling for that trap anyway.

"You could surely do better than just us. Besides, we don't have any worthwhile lootables and our flesh is probably gross tasting." I really don't want to be bested and killed by a solitary Tau looking for a worthy fight. Though what she's doing out here by herself, and why she has such a weird accent, is a mystery. Perhaps she's one of those savage Xeno, parents dead and raised by Tyranids or whatever. I also want to know why her definition of a worthy fight includes trapping us in this unbreakable netting. Seriously. There's no breaking this stuff. Not even with my powerfist. Not even with Gilnstrum raging as hard as he could. And he can rage pretty hard. It was really uncomfortable being in close quarters with his rage. But I guess that's to be expected.

"But I gotta come back wid a worthy opponent. Rockeata said it's fer a test of character."

"I would go so far to say that we're both quite characters, but we're definitely not certified to test anyone. What kind of test of character?"

The Tau shrugged, "We just gotta few new Kommandoz from some Freebootaz that joined up after we krumped their Warboss. Rockeata wants ta test their meddle, and not just their armor bits, their inna armor or sumfin'."

"Yeah, we aren't exactly the best Chaos Marines to be testing inner armor or mettle with. We're hard on the outside but not on the inside. Quite squishy actually. Not much inner armor ourselves."

"We do know one that would do though. A few of them."

I turn to Gilnstrum, "We do?"

He nods very emphatically, "And we could go get some of them for you if you could just release us from the netting here."

The Tau rubbed her chin and then nodded carefully. It took us about ten minutes to get Gilnstrum untangled from the netting because of all of his spikes.

We shake hands briefly with the Tau, or at least Gilnstrum does. My powerfist being far too large to shake. We exchange introductions. She calls herself Blue and she expects us to come back with a replacement catch by the end of the night. She even gives us our bolters back.

Walking off, Gilnstrum and I brofist carefully. You have to brofist carefully when you have a powerfist. No reason to risk unnecessary injury.

"So, who do you think we'll bag for the Tau?"

Gilnstrum turns to me like I'm crazy, "Are you seriously considering-"

"Well, we did promise her. And come off it, there's gotta be at least one person in the Warband that is insufferable enough that if he were to go missing no one would go looking for him."

"I'm pretty sure we'd fall under those requirements."

"Someone besides us."

A large insect chirps in the underbrush. Some animal calls in the distance.

We come up with the name at the same time and carefully brofist again.

"You said it wasn't a trap!"

"Nooo, I said that if it was a trap, it was a really obvious trap, who would make such an obvious trap, no one would fall for it if it was a trap, et cetera."

The Luna Wolf hangs upside down in the netting, absolutely furious. The rations pack filled with sticks and stones and labeled crudely with "SPESS MAHREEN FUD" was pinned tightly to the hapless marine's chest and arms. Yes. We had set it up again, and it worked on this guy too. I actually don't know what to say to that.

"You bastards, what is the meaning of this treachery?"

"We're all Chaos Marines, remember? Traitor Legions? It's kind of in our description." I bring him down, careful to keep the net closed.

"Imbeciles! That means traitor to the Imperium! Not to each other!"

"We like being a little more literal with our descriptors."

"Release me at once and perhaps I will have the Chaos Lord show mercy when he kills you!"

"Now you see that kind of talk will not get you freed any faster. Or at all." We drag him through the denser part of the jungle.

"Can I just shoot him in the head to shut him up?" Gilnstrum was antsy to do some sort of damage this night.

"No, we can't risk brain damage. He would be less of a worthy opponent."

"It wouldn't be too direct of a shot. Just hard enough to get him to shut up."

"What are you two idiots doing this for anyway?"

"Well, you're an intolerable prick and you've done nothing but insult my cooking. Dumping perfectly good scraps that the plague marines would eat on the floor, so that they had to eat it off the floor. And our boots go everywhere man. That's pretty gross even for plague marines. Though I guess not completely out of the oridinary. Anyway, we're sending you off to become a test of character because we promised we would." We enter the clearing with the Tau.

"YOU KEEP PROMISES WITH OTHERS BUT YOU BETRAY YOUR OWN BROTHER? ARE YOU INSANE?"

"Aren't we all? Chaos Marines, remember. Insane is also an accurate descriptor. And you're not my bro, Bro."

We hook the netting to the back of Blue's trukk and she waves before driving off, dragging the still shouting Luna Wolf behind her. His ill wishes and threats devolve into curses and short obscenities as he clears a path through the jungle with his face.

"Gilnstrum."

"Yes, Rosncranz?"

"Have you come to the same conclusion I have?"

"That this one Tau may be what that whole fleet of Tau were after?"

"Good man. Yes that, exactly. Useful information that is."

Gilnstrum smiles finally, not that I could see under his helmet, but I imagine he did, "So what would you do if you could recapture a Titan?"

I think I hear the equivalent of a large bird cawing but you never know with these jungles.

"Give it back because I would really have no use for it and it would be more of a bother than a boon anyway?"

Epilogue:

Blue entered the camp, towing the now quiet but obviously still fuming Luna Wolf with her. Rockeata waved at her with a clearly jittery Snekkit and a somewhat nervous Big Mek. He hadn't gone to sleep yet despite how late it was.

Only one other team of grots had reported back, they bagged a fat and smelly marine that was trying to eat the sticks and stones in the fake rations pack without much success. Most of them wouldn't be coming back of course, but the ones that did were certifiably reliable Kommando Grots. Blue had gone out herself despite protest from both Zizzbitz and Snekkit, saying she wasn't going to stand around as just a mascot. If Snekkit was going to sweep her up and take her on missions, she wasn't going to just be a load and something to protect. And she had made it back, and relatively fast.

"Was a zoggin' good trap, Rockeata, just like ya said."

"See, I told ya. An' you fink yerself smarter den old Rockeata." He walked over and tapped the marine on the head with a half eaten rock. There was an angry barking as the marine tried to force all of the rudest things he could think out at the same time. "Ooo. Dis one's nice an' mean. Good job, Blue."

What trapping a marine had to do with being a reliable Kommando Grot was only known by Rockeata. Similarly, whatever wrestling an unarmed marine to the ground had to do with being a proppa Kommando and how it revealed someone's mettle or character was only known by Rockeata. But Blue believed that tomorrow was going to be fun and interesting regardless.

Maybe it wasn't going to be so great to be a Freeboota, but the next day was going to be another excellent day to be a Scraploota.


	8. blues first day

i found more, alot of it focuses on the scraplootas themselves and others in the general setting

and its a bit out of order.

this is how blue met her pet squig

I DID NOT WRITE THIS

Deep in the bowels of an orkish kroozer, a Big Mek snoozed soundly in his bed whilst a frightened tau girl shivered on the grimy floor beneath him, the musty rags provided to her doing little for her comfort and she had been too disgusted by the odor and appearance of the food she had been provided to even touch it. Today was her first day working aboard the Loot Havva and it had been a terrible day for the child. She had been given various tasks throughout the day, mostly to make "more dakka" and she had failed at every single one. It wasn't her fault though! How was she supposed to make sense of ork tech? Everything she cracked open was just a mess of wires attached to various components seemingly at random, rife with redundancies, tangles, and even switches that weren't plugged into anything at all. On top of that, each gun and each vehicle was its very own labyrinth to decode! It wasn't like that day when they had abducted her in the first place, where she was mostly running on instinct due to shock and primarily tasked with breaking down tau tech into its base components. No, this was a different challenge altogether. One she failed miserably.

She could feel the glare of the other Earth Caste orks all day for dragging them down and for not being "proppa orky". Thankfully, their Fio'O had kept them in check and made sure none of them harmed her in his presence. That didn't stop them from jostling, shoving, and kicking her whenever his back was turned, though. The tau chuckled bitterly at the cruel joke fate had dealt her, forever cursed to remain an outcast and the target of hatred no matter where in the galaxy she was. At least this time she had someone that at least halfway cared about her wellbeing. Thoughts of the big ork helped to stem her tears. It felt good to have someone care about her, even if it was just an ork that seemed to regard her as a pet or some sort of lucky charm as much as a person. Fio'O Zizzbitz did his best to watch over her and even tried to guide her when she was "muckin about". He even gave her the rags she currently called a bed and the food she didn't dare eat, dismissing her abysmal performance today with the reasoning of "You'z just used up all yer luck in dat scrap wiff da tau. You'z just needs ta recharge a bit, just like anything a proppa mekboy builds" and a pat of his massive hand on her head before he hit his bed and immediately began snoring.

The tau's downtrodden reflection of her day was brought to an abrupt end when she heard something lightly scraping and scratching at the slab of metal that passed for a door to Zizzbitz's room. Gripping her spanner, the tau braced herself. If it was one of the smaller ones coming to assault her again, then maybe she could bludgeon it to death quick enough and gain some small morsel of approval amongst the other orks, and if it was a bigger one, then maybe she could throw her spanner at Fio'O Zizzbitz and rouse him before she was mercilessly slaughtered, a possibility she was always painfully aware of in this place. After a few beats, nothing seemed to happen, causing the tau to lower her guard a tad and slink towards the door in curiosity. When she had crawled close enough to the door to touch it, she leaned in to peer under the crack in the door and bringing her face to face with the culprit of the noise. She jumped back and landed on her rump, letting out a small "eep!" in surprise. It was one of those strange creatures that had licked her back on the colony, two legs and a mouth with a single horn and a tail, except this one's body was about the size of her fist and it didn't glow. It made a few chuffing noises as it sniffed the air and rooted about for food. The tau retrieved the bowl of mash that had been given to her and offered a spoonful of the stuff to the little creature. It jumped back in surprise much as she had done earlier, sniffing the spoon with caution, causing the tau girl to giggle softly.

"Come on, little guy." she whispered in encouragement as she gently shook the spoon tantalizingly, careful not to wake the sleeping Zizzbitz. The diminutive beast took a few hops forward before stopping to eye her with suspicion. "You have to be brave if you hope to make it in this nightmare."

The animal suddenly jumped forward and stuck the entirety of the spoon's contents into its maw, gnawing and suckling greedily. The tau rewarded its daring with another spoonful of muck. This continued until the creature summoned enough courage to jump onto the rim of the bowl in the child's lap and eat directly from the source. Once it had its fill, it curled up next to the tau drifted off to sleep. For some reason, the creature made her feel at ease, curled up and content beside.

"We both have to be brave, don't we? Like a Shas'O fighting for the Greater Good!" she mused to the dozing critter as she lifted the spoon out of the bowl of food, inspecting its contents. If her new friend could eat this stuff, then so could she! She had to be brave if she was going to live! The tau closed her eyes, wished that her nose was easier to plug, and shoved a spoonful of the vile sludge into her mouth. It tasted…not that bad, actually. It wasn't great, but it was by no means the worst thing she had ever eaten. Then again, when one has been forced to eat dirt by the mouthful by bullies, one's standards aren't incredibly high. The small bite of food quickly reminded her gut of how little she had eaten since her ordeal and it growled angrily for more. Complying with her grumbling stomach, the tau quickly gulped down more and more of the food until she had emptied its contents. With a belly full of warm food and a brand new companion to see her through this ordeal, the child grabbed her friend and dragged her ragged blanket over the two of them as lie down. The beast let out a small huff in protest to being jostled, but quickly fell asleep, as did the tau to the rhythmic snores of her guardian.

"Oiy! Get up! It's time to get ta work!"

The tau stretched and yawned It felt as though she was being roused awake again by Zizzbitz as soon as she had closed her eyes. But no matter! Today was going to be a good day! She felt confident and ready to take on any challenge that was thrown at her. Her animal companion awoke with her, scrambling up to take perch on the helmet that Zizzbitz had given her.

"Look like you got yerself a squig dere." Zizzbitz noted before heading out the door to the mek shop.

A squig. So that's what her brave little Shas'O is she noted to herself as she scratched its chin. Shas'O Squig. That mystery solved, the tau rushed off to meet the day.

"So 'ow's me favorite blue grot doin'? Didja finally get yer luck back?" Zizzbitz inquired a few hours later, spotting the tau hunched over a gun in concentration.

"I just can't get it to work!" She cried out, the same frustration she felt yesterday welling up inside her alongside her tears. Zizzbitz sighed.

"Well dat's you'z muckin' about again. All you'z gotta do is quit muckin' about and get ta work!"

"But how do I do that?! I'm trying my hardest!" the tau called after him, but it was too late. Zizzbitz had already wandered off again to go run some personal errand or another. She let out an exasperated sigh. If she couldn't figure something out and soon, she wasn't sure how long her position as the Fio'O's favorite would protect. She wasn't even sure how long she'd retain that position if she couldn't pull off something like that modified chainsword again. She attempted to remember how she did it, but try as she might, she just couldn't. She had been acting purely on instinct then, grabbing whatever pieces she could near her and cobbling together in a fashion that seemed to fit. Sure, she recognized a few of the pieces as components from various tau mechanisms due to her time training in the workshop to be initiated, but that was the extent of her knowledge. There was no way she possessed the knowledge to do what she had done then. Lost in thought, her gaze scoured the mek shop. It wasn't anything like the workshops she had been brought to on the colony. There was no consulting of manuals and no orderly assembly lines. Instead, there was a bunch of Earth Caste orks wandering to and fro at their leisure, arguing over this or that, and welding and wiring things however they pleased. Maybe that was the trick. She was an Earth Caste, just like them, building was in her blood! She just needed to stop over thinking it, grab a handful of bits, and stop mucking about and get to work! She cleared her mind and looked down on the mess of parts in front her. Awash in a state of serenity, the child's hands began to move on their own accord…

"See, I told ya you just needed ta recharge!" Zizzbitz exclaimed proudly, clapping the child on the back and sending her sprawling. When she had recovered from the tumble, she noticed with surprise he was inspecting the gun she had been working on. She could hardly recall starting it, much less finishing it. She remembered that she had wanted to incorporate the firing mechanism and gyroscopic stabilizers of a pulse rifle and then…nothing, just a blank. Zizzbitz took aim and fired the gun, leaving a fried stump where the head of an ork who had been particularly cruel to the tau whenever he thought Zizzbitz wasn't looking.

"An' don't let me catch any of da rest of ya tryin' ta rough up me Blue again, or else I'll krump ya just the same!" Zizzbitz shouted to the mass in front of him before handing the gun back to the tau.

Beaming proudly, the tau scratched her squig on the head "I think we might make it out of this one just yet, Shas'O."


	9. am i an ork?

i own nothing...ever...

also i only do this to share an even read it from an easy format for myself.

in this blue wonders what an ork is.

"Whut'z an Ork?"

Urtylug passes a grimy hand through his equally grimy mohawk, dusting the area with green particles.

"Whut da zog iz dat suppose ta mean? An Ork iz an Ork. Datssit. Quit muckin' about."

"UV COURSE we know whut an Ork iz! An Ork iz not a grot! An' we know dat 'cause we iz an Ork uv course." Threegrot sways in that weird way he always does, deflecting the question like he always does.

"I-I mean, dat's 'cause I iz an Ork! Not we."

"As da gud book sayz, furst, Gork an' Mork made a buncha stuff, den a buncha udda stuff, an' den made a whole load uv zog know wut so deir chozen onez had plenty ta loot and krump and stomp, so dey ken fight an' win all day. An' deir chozen onez will be da Orks, da biggest an' da strongest."

Fizzgutz has his book open and his fingers tracing the lines of text, but he doesn't look down once.

"Iz as simple as dat. An Ork iz a chozen one uv Gork an' Mork."

"AN ORK IZ DA BIGGEST AN' DA STRONGEST AN' DA GREENEST AN' DA TUFFEST AN' DA MIGHTEST FING DERE IZ."

Boris booms overhead and gestures in a jerky manner, the railguns on his upraised arms misfire a little.

"AN ORK IZ NO HUMIE, NO PANSYBOY, NO POINTY 'EADED GIT. WE IZ PROUD AN' STRONG AN' GREEN—"

"But Boris, you iz red an' yellow alluva."

"SHUT UP YE GROT. I IZ GREEN AS MORK AND GORK DEMSELVEZ ON DA INSIDE."

"Whut'z dis? Blue iz muckin' about? Dat ain't da Blue I know!" Tinka slaps my back none too lightly, knocking me over from where I'm sitting. "Git back ta work before I krump ya."

"Hey, Tinka, what's an Ork to you?" I say as I pick myself up.

"Not like you ta ask alla dese filsoff- filly- fillis- big kwesshuns neither. Ya look like a grot made off wid ya fav'rite shoota. Sumfin' da madder?"

It may just be my imagination, but the Big Mek has a slight look of concern. I shake my head, "It's nothing, I guess I just wasn't feeling very Orky."

"Now don't say dat, Blue. You iz plenty Orky."

"Well, I'm not very green, inside or out, I'm not big or tough, and I'm definitely not very strong. I'm a Tau. I'm like the opposite of an Ork. What am I even doing here?"

Tinka shakes his head, "Soundz like some git got up onna wrong side uv da bedroll an' got pissed on by a squig. Listen 'ere." He sits down next to me and puts an hand on my shoulder.

"An Ork ain't just about bein' big an' strong an' green an' winnin' an' fightin'. Dose fings iz part uv it, yes, but da most important fing uv bein' an Ork iz in 'ere." He jabs a finger into my chest, "Can ya feel the Waaagh inside you? Does it speak ta ya an' tell ya 'ow to fight an' build an' add even more dakka?"

"Yessir."

"Den gud. You'z an Ork." He gets up. "If dat part iz dere, I got no doutz about yer Orkiness."

"Is that really it?"

"Da Waaagh is whut keepz da Orks tagedder. Da Waaagh iz whut drivez Orks ta fight an' loot an' krump. An' Orks push da Waaagh fo'ward so it'z a cycle. If ya really got da Waaagh inside ya, yer as Orky as a Warboss I'd say."

I vaguely remember someone else saying similar things, something about gue'vesa, and how they were to be treated with respect because they also served the greater good, or some nonsense like that. But that was different, the gue'vesa were not Tau and could never be considered Tau.

But I am an Ork. And everyone else here is an Ork. Or a grot, but that's beside the point. Maybe that's why they had so much trouble articulating the difference between them and me. Because they didn't see a difference.

"Now, whut's da Waaagh sayin' ta ya now, Blue?"

"That I should stop muckin' around." I get up and brush off my overalls. I suddenly remember there's a Power Klaw that I wanted to work on.

"Dat's my Blue. Go get 'em."


	10. Grot got a request

again i own nothing,...ever.

so this is a chap about a grot making a request.

Blue was making her way back to the Mek shop, with the arm load of scrap she'd bought off some boys with her eccess teef. She had some good bits from a hover tank she wanted to try to use in her Drohn Shield to make it good for smakkin' gits. She reaches her personal corner and walks by Mr Squigg, who was lieing lazily on the floor. Dumping her load on her work table, she pulls out some schematics and pours over them.

"If I c'n hook the hover pad gubbins to the outer shell, and run it on low, it should make the shield a little stronga, and then rig a pressure trigga to blast in on hi when it use it to krump somethen'..."

She plucked the converted Tau drone from the wall, and pried the metal casing open, and began to work on the insides. As she continued to work, she started hearing a sound, subtle at first, but gradually growing louder. She didn't pay it any mind at first, but it was constant and growing steadily louder, distracting her from her project. What was it? Stomping? No, that wasn't it, it sounded like several feet hitting the ground in unison. What was the word? She curled her mouth thoughtfully. That was it! Marching.

A growl from her pet caught her attention, and she turned to look outside to the ship's hold. What greeted her sight was several Grots, marching in unison. They kept getting closer to her hub, then all at once came to a halt, turning about face in her direction.

Blue was overcome with unease. Ten, fifteen, there must have been nearly thirty Grots at her doorstep. Normaly Grots didn't intimidate her at all, but with these numbers, they could probably krump a Nob without much difficulty.

She started to reach for her shoota on the wall, when a lone grot moved forward from the rest of the group. He was smartly dressed in a fitted uniform, complete with hat, and had a uncharacteristically commanding presence.

Blue tried to hide her fear as the gretchin walked inside.

"Whatcha want, ya git?" She spoke in a harsh tone, so he wouldn't get any ideas about who was boss.

"Call me Pa'mmol." the Grot answered. "I've come fa bussiness."

"Bus'ness?" she said, calming down a bit. "What kina' bus'ness?"

The Grot reached into his coat and produced a rolled paper.

"I want ya ta build this." he explained, handing it to her. She took it and unfurled it. On it was a somewhat crude, yet admittedly detailed blueprint for a small tank. She looked over it silently for over a minute. "Well?" Pa'mmol said expectantly.

"No sweat." Blue retorted. "I could build this in ma sleep." The design wasn't anything too complicated. Building it would take a little work, but it looked like fun.

"Glad to hear it." Pa'mmol said flatly. "'Cause I want twenty of them."

Blue jerked her head up. "Bwuwhahuh?!" she gargled in bewilderment. "Twenny'? Ar ya daft?! Do you have any idea how much scrap that'll take? Not to mention how much teef it cost!"

Pa'mmol raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Two more grots walked in carrying a heavy metal case. They plopped it down on the floor, and one opened it. It was full to the brim with teef. The sheer volume mesmerized blue, there could be over a thousand teef in that case.

"Is this sufficient?" Pa'mmol said.

Blue turned to him slowly. "How soon do ya need em'?"

"Take your time." he assured. "I came to ya cause I heard you did propa quality. Don't want to muck that up. My boys will assist ya in getting together any scrap y'll need."

"How'd you get all this anyhows?" the blue grot said skeptically.

Pa'mmol adjusted his hat. "Through sacrifice, perseverance, an some right proppa motivation. We as a group have no interested in dieing meaningless deaths just cause we's grots. We came to the conclushan to form this here battalion, and by pulling our resources, aim to make it a reality."

Blue couldn't help but be impressed. It was likely this grot was the reason the others could unite in such a way. She looked at the print again, then at the teef trunk. She gave an enthusiastic shrug.

"We best get started then." She said. "You lot! I'm gonna tell you what I need, and I wan ya to get it fast!"

Pa'mmol gave the slightest of smiles, then turned to his men.

"You 'erd 'er boys, look sharp!"

Fire and debris rained down on all around them, as Pa'mmol moved his troops forward. The Killy' Fox came to a halt, as he surveyed the battle field with his eye-scopes. A group of Chaos marines that had been ambushed by Kommandos in the distance, however they were regrouping as some armor support was moving in to join up with them.

He wasn't having any of that.

"All squads, fowad'!" he bellowed into his speaky box, as the five contingents of 4 tanks each surged forward, cutting down any stray marines they happened upon unchallenged.

"Second and third squads, circle round eastward, box them in! I dun wanna any of these gits coming out alive!"

Marco cursed as he fended of another Kommando with his power sword. Outmaneuvered, by orks! He had ordered his men to fall back, and they were fighting desperately to keep from getting surrounded. He saw in the distance a squadron of allied tanks making their way to his position. His forces were breaking away from the mob and managed to find some cover. Soon they would make for their armor and counter attack these savages. He looked at the tanks hopefully, then watched as they all simultaneously erupted in to flames. His eyes widened as one flipped over.

Over the horizon he saw them. Five, ten, a whole bloody battalion! They wheeled in from all sides, and he realized to his horror that all paths of escape were cut off. In the distance he could just make out the tank commander's voice.

"ON MOI MARK." the one sitting in the black tank bellowed, hand raised

Marco slumped in defeat. "Outmaneuvered..." he mutterd.

"FIRE!" Pa'mmol roared, swinging his arm down as the battalion's guns flamed in unison. The whistling screeched in Marcos' ears.

"By Gretchin-" his last words not audible as steel rained down on their position, splattering his men and himself into a gory mess.

Tank Commanda Pa'mmol looked at their handiwork through his scopes. Satisfied, he took out his speaky box.

"Keep movin, ya gits, we got more work to be doing!"

And so the Taink Battalion got rollin', lead by a most brilliant Cammanda. By orc standards, at least.


End file.
